An international student shares growing concerns with the Glasgow Guardian over UofG’s new attendance rules and their impact on privacy
Following an email regarding UofG’s new attendance monitoring system, sent on 8 January 2025, students have become increasingly concerned about the new attendance requirements. The new regulations, which came into force on 13 January, have raised questions regarding privacy and General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) violations.
The Glasgow Guardian has been in conversation with an international student, who wishes to remain anonymous. They told us that on an iPhone device, to check-in to your classes through the SafeZone app “You must grant the ‘Always’ location permissions to check-in, use Bluetooth alert devices, and receive location-based notifications, while the app is in the background’. Precise location is also required to be turned on to check-in.
The student expressed their concerns regarding GDPR and privacy with the Immigration Compliance team twice. Their first inquiry, dated 8 January 2025, was regarding how long to stay checked-in to meet the mandatory requirement of “once a week”. The student states they intend to attend all classes, however they thought that manually checking-in every class through the SafeZone app on top of scanning the QR code was unnecessary. The Immigration Compliance team responded to their inquiry stating that “The check-in system is currently running in tandem with the class check-in, as both fulfil different functions. The minimum requirement is 1 contact point per week.”. They followed to add a link for FAQs, and copied an extract from the latter reiterating that “student Visa holders are expected to document their attendance at all timetabled teaching events […]”. The minimum attendance requirement is “at least 1 contact point per week.”
On 14 January, the student sent another email asking for further clarification to the Immigration Compliance team, asking how long they need to stay checked-in in order to “meet the requirement of once a week”. They also expressed concerns about accidentally forgetting to check-out of class. While checked-in, they noticed that SafeZone tracked them for “almost 24 hours”.
The Glasgow Guardian understands the student failed to check-out of class on the app. However, checking-out of class will not stop SafeZone from tracking students’ location. Students must in fact manually change their phone’s settings and location preferences each time they check-out of class. Failure to do so will result in the app continuing to run in the background and tracking their location. While the SafeZone app is a campus safety app, international students are asked to keep it not only for safety reasons, but now for Visa monitoring purposes.
In response to the student’s request for clarification, the Immigration Compliance team recommended that they “refer to the guidance and FAQ’s which were issued.”
The student said regarding this incident and the new requirements: “It just feels like an intrusion of privacy from the University, as well as a lack of trust towards international students, who already have to deal with integrating and adapting to living here.”
“Adding on this threat of having our visas removed if we don’t comply, without any regard for our consent in being GPS-tracked is one step too far. The information is also confusing, as we are being told to check in “at least once a week” on the one hand, but also being strongly encouraged to check in at every class.”
During our conversation, the student also highlighted the lack of justification from the University on their use of such a privacy-invasive system to monitor attendance.
Concerns were also raised about what might come next and what other future requirements students may be expected to comply with. The student voiced how they couldn’t make sense of the drastic change from last semester when students had to scan a QR code during class, as now they are required to have their location on their phones and check-in via the app.
A University spokesperson said: “[…] We have streamlined our procedures to make registering attendance for international sponsored students as easy and as accessible as possible, via the SafeZone app or the UofG Helpdesk engagement form. We only collect the information needed to fulfil our responsibilities smoothly and responsibly.”
“The wellbeing of our students remains our highest priority, and we encourage any student with concerns about attendance or any other aspect of their studies to reach out to their School or College office, where staff are ready to provide guidance and support.”
