Personal accounts are those you sign up for yourself for your own use. These are different from accounts that the university makes available to you and for which it has a contract with the vendor, such as Zoom or Google. For example, if you have an Evernote or iCloud account, these are personal accounts—even if you created the account using your U-M email address. Your U-M Google account, however, is for a university contracted-for service; it is not a personal account.
If you use a personal account for your work, be aware of the following:
- Passwords. Do not use your UMICH password for any personal account.
- FOIA requests. Work-related information stored in your personal account is subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
- Business continuity. Do not store work-related information only in a personal account if it needs to be available to others at the university for university business. Consider how others can access that information if something happens to you or you change jobs.
- U-M policy. Work-related information stored or shared using a personal account is subject to U-M policy. In particular, see Privacy and the Need to Monitor and Access Records (SPG 601.11) and Security of Personally Owned Devices that Access or Maintain Sensitive Institutional Data (SPG 601.33).
Personal accounts should never be used to maintain or share the university's sensitive data. See Personal Accounts in the Sensitive Data Guide for more detail.