Acceptable Use and AI

This page sets out the rules for using MIE Connect, with extra rules for recruitment partners, and explains how our artificial intelligence (AI) features work, what information they send and to whom, and the limits on what they do. These rules form part of our Terms and Conditions.

Who these rules apply to

These rules apply to everyone who uses our website, the Get started questions, the student portal and the partner portal, including students, parents and guardians, recruitment partners and visitors. Recruitment partners must also follow the extra rules below.

Information and documents

• Give us only information that is true and complete, and only documents that are genuine and unaltered.
• Do not upload or send documents that are forged, edited or belong to someone else, or that you are not entitled to share.
• Do not apply in someone else's name, or create an account for someone else without their permission.

If we believe that information or documents are false, we may stop working on the application, withdraw it, and report it to the university concerned and, where the law requires, to the relevant authorities.

Security and fair use

• Do not copy our course, university or ranking information in bulk, or collect it with scrapers, bots or other automated tools, without our written permission. Search engines that follow our robots file are welcome.
• Do not try to get into accounts, records or systems that are not yours, or to get round our sign in, access controls or bot checks.
• Do not attack our website, for example by overloading it, sending harmful code, probing it for weaknesses or testing its security without our written permission.
• Do not upload files that contain viruses or other harmful code.
• Do not use our website to send spam or unwanted advertising.

Respect for other people

• Do not pretend to be one of our counsellors or staff, a university, or another student. Do not suggest that you work for or represent MIE Connect if you do not.
• Do not use other people's personal information, including information you see in the portals, for anything except the purpose it was shared for.
• Do not share other people's personal information with us unless you are allowed to.
• Do not harass, threaten or abuse our staff, partners or anyone else. We may stop working with anyone who does.
• Do not use our services for anything unlawful, including fraud.

Extra rules for recruitment partners

• Get each student's agreement before you share their information with us, and tell them how we will use it by pointing them to our Privacy Policy.
• Follow data protection law whenever you handle students' information, including information you see or download from the partner portal.
• Look only at the records you need for the students you work with, and do not download or copy records in bulk.
• Keep your sign in details private. Do not share your account. Each person in your organisation needs their own account.
• Tell us straight away, and within 24 hours, if you think a student's information has been lost, stolen or seen by someone who should not see it.
• Describe our services, universities and courses accurately. Do not promise offers, scholarships, a CAS or visas.
• Have your own safeguarding arrangements for students under 18, and tell us straight away about any concern for a student's safety, as our Safeguarding page explains.
• Do not charge students fees in our name, or ask students to pay a university's fees or deposit to you or to us.
• Do not use our AI tools to replace your own checks, or to write anything you have not read and checked yourself.
• Have your own safeguarding arrangements for students under 18, and tell us about any safeguarding concern straight away, as our Safeguarding page explains.

Reporting a security problem or misuse

If you find a security weakness on our website, or see our services being misused, email info@mieconnect.com with "Security" in the subject line. Please tell us what you found and do not test further or access anyone else's information. If someone has contacted you pretending to be from MIE Connect, tell us too.

What happens if the rules are broken

If someone breaks these rules, we may warn them, remove content, suspend or close their account, stop working with them, end our agreement with a recruitment partner, report the matter to a university or the relevant authorities, or take legal action. We act fairly and in proportion to what happened, and where it is fair and lawful we explain our decision.

How our AI features work

Some features use artificial intelligence (AI) provided through Cloudflare Workers AI. The AI models run on Cloudflare's own network, under Cloudflare's terms. When these features are switched on, they work like this, and you can always use our services without them:

• Guided journey: after you create your account, about ten questions build a shortlist of up to 20 courses from your answers. Fixed rules, not AI, choose and rank the courses from your answers. AI helps only when you ask it to: it can suggest subjects from what you write about yourself, and answer a question you ask on your journey pages using only our approved guides. Your answers and shortlist are saved to your account and shared with your counsellor.
• Course search: if you type a sentence into a search box, such as "cheap nursing degrees in the UK", AI turns it into search filters, such as a subject, a level, a country and a fee limit. The results page tells you how your search was read, and you can change the filters yourself or search for your exact words instead. Short keyword searches usually do not use AI.
• Subject suggestions: in the Get started questions and on your Study interest page, you can describe what you enjoy, and AI suggests up to five subjects from our list, each with a short reason. You choose which, if any, to pick.
• Saathi, our chat assistant: answers questions only from our approved guides and links the guide it used, finds courses in our catalogue, shows a signed in student their own journey step, documents and applications from our records, and passes you to a counsellor when you ask. Its answers are labelled AI. It gives general information, not immigration advice, and never tells you whether you will get an offer or a visa.
• Course summaries: AI writes a short "at a glance" summary of a course from the university's own course information.

Our staff and recruitment partners also have AI tools:

• Email drafts: AI drafts an email to a student from the student's name, the application and its status, the documents we are waiting for and what the counsellor wants the email to say. The counsellor checks and edits every draft before sending it.
• Record summaries: AI summarises a student's record, including recent comments and emails, and suggests next steps, so that a counsellor can pick up a case quickly.
• Document checks: AI can read the documents uploaded for an application and point out things a person should look at, such as a name or date that does not match. It only raises flags. A member of staff checks every flag and makes every decision.

What we send to Workers AI

• your questions and answers in the guided journey;
• text you write about your goals and results, such as a search sentence or a description of what you enjoy;
• course information we hold, such as course descriptions, entry requirements and fees.

We never send your uploaded documents or your passport details to our AI features.

Please do not type personal details, such as your passport number or health information, into a search box or any other box where you write freely. A search sentence also appears in the web address of the results page.

To keep pages fast, we may store AI answers for up to a week in Cloudflare's temporary storage, and we limit how often each visitor can use these features.

What Cloudflare does with it

Cloudflare processes this information as our processor, under a contract, only to give us an answer. Cloudflare's terms say that it does not use what we send to Workers AI to train AI models, and that it does not keep what we send once it has answered. Because the models run on Cloudflare's network, the companies that made them do not receive your information. You can read Cloudflare's privacy policy.

AI can be wrong

AI can misread what you meant, miss something, or state something that is not true. Treat its answers as a starting point, not as advice. Always check fees, entry requirements, deadlines and scholarships on the course page and with your counsellor or the university before you rely on them.

People make the decisions

A counsellor makes the decisions about your applications, not the AI, and goes through your shortlist with you. You choose what to apply for. We do not make decisions about you based only on automated processing that have legal effects on you or affect you in a similarly significant way. Universities make their own admissions decisions.

Your choices

• You never have to use AI. You can search with keywords, pick subjects yourself and ask your counsellor to suggest courses.
• If you would rather we did not use AI with your answers, tell your counsellor or email info@mieconnect.com and we will note it on your record. Your counsellor will then not use the AI tools with your information, and our staff will check your documents without them. The AI help in the guided journey runs only when you use it.
• You can ask for a copy of the information we hold about you, including what these features use, as our Privacy Policy explains.

Changes to this page

We update this page when our rules or our AI features change. The date at the top of the page shows when it was last updated. If a change significantly affects you, we will tell you before it takes effect.