Dear Colleagues,

As the campus continues its transition to the Unified Communications (UC) system, questions and concerns about privacy on the new system have been raised. We have partnered with the Office of Privacy and Information Assurance to provide a webpage of considerations and recommendations regarding UC privacy. Examples of the types of issues discussed on the webpage include:

- Individuals using the Windows Lync client can initiate recording a phone call. A visual warning will be displayed to all call participants using the Windows Lync client if another participant initiates a recording. Callers who are not using Lync will receive an audible notification. Mac users will not receive notification that a call is being recorded.

- Lync phone calls are never recorded by CITES, nor does CITES have the ability to 'tap' phone calls: no call can be recovered after the fact if it was not recorded by a Lync user who participated in the call.

- Instant messages (IM) are encrypted as they travel between computers and are, by default, stored in individual users' inboxes. Users on either side of an IM conversation can choose to save the conversation.  You have the option to disable IM saving on your machine, but not the machine of the other user.   You should avoid writing anything in an instant message that you wouldn't feel comfortable including in an email.

- You can control how your calendar is shared. The default calendar setting is that everyone across campus can see when you are free/busy, but you can change these settings so that certain users can have access to your full calendar (except for those things marked private).

A full list of considerations and recommendations for UC privacy can be found at:
http://www.cites.illinois.edu/uc/privacy.html

Thank you for your continued partnership in this campus transition. If you have any further questions or concerns with Unified Communications, please contact CITES at 217-244-7000 or consult@illinois.edu.

Sincerely,
Paul Hixson
Interim Chief Information Officer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign