Privacy Policy

This policy explains how MIE Connect collects, uses, shares and protects personal information when you use our website, the Get started questions, our student and partner portals, and our application support services. It also explains your rights, wherever you live, and how to use them.

We have written it for students, their parents and guardians, and our recruitment partners. If anything is unclear, email info@mieconnect.com and we will explain. Our Cookie Policy, Acceptable use and AI page and Safeguarding page give more detail on some of the topics below.

Who we are

MIE Connect is a trading name of A H & Z Associates Limited, a private limited company registered in England and Wales with company number 08110262. Our registered office is 16 St. Clare Street, London, England, EC3N 1LQ. We provide educational support services: we help students find courses at universities and colleges, prepare and submit applications, and plan for study abroad. In this policy, "MIE Connect", "we", "us" and "our" mean A H & Z Associates Limited.

For the personal information described in this policy, we are the controller. A controller is the organisation that decides why and how personal information is used, and is responsible for looking after it. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK data protection regulator, under registration number ZA058704.

This policy does not cover our own employees. Universities, colleges and recruitment partners have their own privacy policies for the information they hold.

How to contact us about privacy

Email info@mieconnect.com about anything to do with your personal information, including requests to use your rights. For anything else, email info@mieconnect.com. You can also write to us at our registered office.

We have assessed whether we must appoint a Data Protection Officer and concluded that we are not required to. One of our directors is responsible for data protection and oversees how we handle personal information.

How we are paid

Our service is free for students. Universities and colleges pay us a commission when a student we have helped enrols with them. This is how we are paid for our work. It does not change the advice we give you, and it does not change what you pay. You pay the university's own fees and deposits directly to the university.

To be paid, we tell a university that we supported your application, and the university tells us how your application is going, for example whether you received an offer, whether you paid a deposit and whether you enrol. We keep records of the commission we receive.

The information we collect

What we collect depends on how you use our services. This section lists all of it, by where it comes from.

When you browse our website

• Technical information. Like every website, ours receives your IP address (the number that identifies your internet connection), your browser and device type, the pages you ask for and the time. Cloudflare, which hosts our website, uses this to deliver pages and to protect the website from attacks and automated abuse. Cloudflare also keeps short logs of requests and errors for us, which can include your IP address and browser details.
• Your country. Cloudflare tells us which country your connection comes from. We use it to show the entry requirements for students from your country, to suggest your country first in country lists, and to set the dialling code in the phone number field. We do not store it.
• Visit counts. When you open a course or university page, your browser tells us so that we can show the most visited ones. We store only a count for each page for each day. We do not store anything about you and do not use a cookie for this. To stop one visitor inflating the counts, we keep a counter linked to a scrambled (hashed) form of your IP address for up to an hour.
• Your shortlist. When you tap the heart on a course, the course is saved in your browser's storage on your device. It is not sent to us unless you are signed in as a student, or you send your shortlist to a counsellor through the Get started questions.
• Your budget. The first year budget on course pages is worked out in your browser. The numbers you type are not sent to us.
• Searches. We use what you type in our search boxes to find courses, universities and subjects. When our AI features are switched on and your search reads like a sentence, it may be read by our AI features, which run on Cloudflare Workers AI, as described in "Artificial intelligence features" below.
• Cookies. We use cookies that are needed to make the website work. With your permission, we also use optional Statistics and Marketing tools. Our Cookie Policy explains each one.

When you answer the Get started questions

• Your study plans: where you would like to study, the level of study, the year and month you would like to start, and up to five subjects.
• Your first name, last name (optional), email address and mobile number with its country code.
• If you came from a course page, that course. If you choose to send your shortlist to a counsellor, up to 10 courses from it.
• If you reached us through an advert or a link that carries tracking details in its web address (often called UTM parameters), the source, medium, campaign, content and search terms it records. This tells us which advert or link brought you to us.
• When our AI features are switched on and you use the "Tell us what you enjoy" box, the text you type.

While you work through the questions, your answers are kept in a cookie on your device for up to 24 hours. When you submit the last step, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that you are a person and not an automated bot. We then save your answers as a new enquiry and a counsellor contacts you.

When you sign in

Accounts are provided by MIE Auth, our sign in service. MIE Auth is provided by MH Global Group Limited, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 16317481, whose address is 16 St. Clare Street, London, England, EC3N 1LQ. MH Global Group Limited is in the same group of companies as us (MH Global Group). It decides how MIE Auth uses your sign in details, and we decide how MIE Connect uses your information. You can sign in with a one time code sent by email, a password, a passkey, a sign in link sent by email, or your Google account, and you can turn on two step verification.

MIE Auth looks after your sign in details. Its privacy notice explains what it keeps and why. In short, it keeps your email address and name, your profile picture if you sign in with Google, whether your email address is verified, your password in a scrambled form that cannot be reversed (if you set one), your passkeys, your two step verification settings in encrypted form, your sign in sessions with their IP address and browser details, and a security record of account activity. It stores this in the EU. You can contact MIE Auth at info@mieconnect.com.

When you sign in, MIE Auth sends us your MIE Auth user ID, your email address, your name, whether your email address is verified, and a link to your profile picture. We use the first four and do not keep the link to your profile picture. We then keep our own record of your session. It holds a scrambled copy of your session token, your user ID, email address and name, your type of account (student, partner or staff), a link to your student record or partner organisation, and when the session ends.

When you choose to sign in or create an account from our website, we may pass your email address to MIE Auth so that it is filled in for you, and tell it whether you want to create an account or use Google.

If you sign in as a student and we do not yet have a record for you, we create one with your name and email address so that a counsellor can help you. If we already hold a record with the same email address, for example from the Get started questions, we link your account to it.

MH Global Group Limited and A H & Z Associates Limited are separate controllers. MH Global Group Limited is the controller of your sign in data: your MIE Auth account, your sign in details, your sessions with MIE Auth and its security records, including when you sign in through account.mieconnect.com. A H & Z Associates Limited is the controller of the information you give MIE Connect and of the identity details MIE Auth sends us when you sign in (your MIE Auth user ID, email address, name, profile picture link and whether your email address is verified). Each company answers for its own part, and you can use your rights with either of them.

When you use the guided journey

After you create your account, our guided journey asks you about ten questions and builds a shortlist of up to 20 courses from your answers. It asks about:

• where you would like to study, the level of study and your subject;
• your latest qualification and its result;
• your English language test and score, if you have one;
• your budget and the month you would like to start;
• where in your chosen country you would like to study, for example a region or city, or anywhere;
• your priorities, and anything a course must have.

If you are under 18, the guided journey also asks for the email address of a parent or guardian. It knows you are under 18 from the date of birth you give at the start. Your answers and your shortlist are saved to your account and shared with your counsellor, who uses them to advise you.

When you use the student portal

• Profile: your first and last name, mobile number, country of residence, nationality and, if you add one, a profile photo. Your email address comes from your account and cannot be changed in the portal.
• Study interest: your preferred level of study, destination, start year and month, subjects, yearly tuition budget and how you plan to pay for your studies.
• Shortlist: while you are signed in, the courses you shortlist are also saved to your record, so that they follow you to other devices and your counsellor can see them. The first time you sign in on a device, we combine the list on that device with the list on your record.
• Applications: the courses you ask us to apply for, and for each application the university, course, campus, mode and level of study, and its progress, including offers and their conditions.
• Documents: the documents we ask you to upload, such as your passport, visa copy, academic certificates and mark sheets, English test results, CV, references, work experience letters, statement of purpose, bank statements, sponsor letters, proof of accommodation and your Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS), the reference a UK university gives you for your visa application. We accept PDF, JPG, PNG, DOC and DOCX files of up to 10 MB.
• Statement of purpose: the text you write about why you want to study a course.
• Personal PDFs: you can download your shortlist, a checklist of the documents you need and a visa checklist as PDF files. We create them only from the information on your account, using Cloudflare Browser Rendering. We make each PDF when you ask for it and send it straight to you. We do not keep a copy.
• Events: the events you register for.
• Requests to delete your account: we record the request so that our team can act on it.

Your profile photo is stored differently from your documents. Your documents can only be opened by people who are allowed to see your record. Your profile photo is stored at a web address that includes a random part, so it is hard to guess, but anyone who has that exact address can open it. Please do not use a photo you would not want others to see.

When you talk to us

We keep what you tell us by email, phone, video call, WhatsApp, at events and through the portal, and the notes our counsellors and partners write about your enquiry. When a counsellor or partner emails you from our system, we keep a copy on your record. Our staff use Google Workspace for their own email.

If you message us on WhatsApp, WhatsApp (part of Meta) handles the messages under its own terms and privacy policy, and we see your phone number, your WhatsApp name and your messages. We only message you from the MIE Connect number shown on our website, and a counsellor adds a short note of what was agreed to your record. The chat itself stays in WhatsApp, and we delete it from our phones when we no longer need it, using the same periods as your record.

From recruitment partners

Recruitment partners are independent businesses that refer students to us. When a partner refers you, they give us your name, email address, mobile number, country of residence and nationality. They may add your study plans, budget, how you plan to pay, your work experience and your immigration history, for example previous visas or visa refusals. The partner must have your agreement before sharing your information with us.

From universities and colleges

Universities and colleges send us updates on your application, such as an offer and its conditions, a request for more documents, a decision, a CAS, and whether you enrol.

When you use a partner's referral link

A recruitment partner may give you a referral link to MIE Connect (an address that ends in /r/ and a six character code). The page it opens tells you which partner referred you. If you then create an account or send us an enquiry, we link your record to that partner, and they can see your answers, shortlist, applications and documents so they can help you. We remember the code on your device for 30 days only if you allow Marketing cookies (the mc_ref cookie); otherwise it is used only while you follow the link. If your record is already linked to a partner, it stays with that partner. To be unlinked, email info@mieconnect.com.

If you message us on WhatsApp from our website, the message we prepare for you includes the page you were looking at and, if you are signed in, your name, your MIE Connect reference, a short summary of your study plans and the partner who referred you. You can change or delete any of it before you send it. WhatsApp is run by Meta, under its own privacy policy.

If you are a recruitment partner

If you register as a recruitment partner, we collect your name, position, business name, business email address, contact number and business address, after a Cloudflare Turnstile check. We use this to assess your registration, run your partner account and work with you. We also keep a record of the students you refer and the actions you take in the partner portal.

Information about other people

Some documents include information about other people, for example a parent or sponsor named on a bank statement or sponsor letter. Please tell them that you are sharing it with us and why. We use it only to support your application.

If you are under 18 and give us a parent's or guardian's email address, we use it to involve them in your plans and to ask for their consent where it is needed, as our Safeguarding page explains. We contact them before our Application team approves an application for you, and when we need to keep you safe. We do not send them marketing.

Special category and criminal offence information

Some information needs extra protection by law. This "special category" information includes details of your health, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation and biometric data. We do not ask for it unless we need it to support you, for example if you tell us about a disability so that a university can make adjustments, or if a university or visa process asks for it. We use it only with your explicit consent, or where the law otherwise allows, for example to establish or defend legal claims, or to protect someone whose life is in danger. We share it only where it is needed for that purpose.

We do not ask about criminal convictions. If we suspect that information or documents are false, we may record our concerns and report them (see "Who we share it with"). For this we rely on the condition in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 2018 for preventing or detecting unlawful acts, and we keep the policy document that the Act requires.

How we use your information

Data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for each way we use your information. The next section explains each basis.

Our lawful bases

• Contract: we need your information to provide the service you ask for, or to take steps you ask for before we provide it. If you do not give us information a university needs, we may not be able to apply for you.
• Legitimate interests: we have a genuine business reason, and we have checked that it is not outweighed by your rights and interests. You can ask us for details of this check.
• Consent: we ask your permission first. You can withdraw your consent at any time, and this does not affect what we did before you withdrew it.
• Legal obligation: the law requires us to keep or share the information.
• Vital interests: we need to act to protect someone's life, for example in an emergency.

Who we share it with

We never sell your personal information. We share it only where we need to, and only as much as is needed.

• Universities and colleges you apply to. We send your application, documents and messages so that they can consider your application and contact you. They make their own decisions and are responsible for the information they hold, under their own privacy policies.
• The recruitment partner who referred you. A partner can see the records of the students they referred, including applications, documents, comments and emails. Partners only see students linked to their own organisation.
• Our staff. Counsellors and managers see the records they are responsible for, depending on their role, office and organisation. A small number of administrators can see all records so that they can run the system.
• MIE Auth, provided by MH Global Group Limited, for signing in, as described above.
• Service providers that work for us under contract and only on our instructions. The table below lists them.
• Our staff in other countries. Some of our counsellors work outside the UK. Wherever they work, they use our own systems under this policy, and they see only the records their role allows.
• Professional advisers such as our lawyers, accountants and insurers, where needed.
• Public authorities, including immigration, tax and law enforcement authorities, where the law requires it or where you ask us to help with a process they run. If we believe that information or documents are false, we tell the university concerned and, where the law requires, the relevant authorities.
• Emergency services, if someone's life or safety is at risk.
• A buyer or successor, if our business is ever sold or reorganised, under the same protections described here.

Analytics and advertising tools, if you allow them

We can use the tools below to understand how our website is used and to measure our advertising. Each tool loads only after you allow its category in our cookie banner, and only once we have switched it on. Today we use only Google Ads. The live table in our Cookie Policy always shows which tools are switched on.

• Statistics: Google Analytics counts visits and shows which pages people use. Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar show heatmaps and recordings of how people move, click and scroll on our pages, so that we can find pages that are hard to use. We use their standard settings, which hide what you type into forms from recordings.
• Marketing: Google Ads, the Meta Pixel (Facebook and Instagram), the TikTok Pixel and the LinkedIn Insight Tag measure how many people reach us from an advert and go on to start an application. Some also help show our adverts to people likely to be interested.

If you allow them, these providers receive information such as the pages you visit, your device and browser, your IP address, identifiers stored in cookies, how you reached our website, and actions such as starting an application. They may combine it with other information they hold and use it for their own purposes, including advertising, as their privacy policies explain. For those purposes they are responsible for the information themselves. Google explains this in how Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.

Statistics and Marketing tools never run while you are signed in, whatever you chose in the cookie banner, so they never see your account, your guided journey or your record.

If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we keep Marketing tools off unless you switch Marketing on yourself. You can change your choice at any time from "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page.

Artificial intelligence features

Some features use artificial intelligence (AI) provided through Cloudflare Workers AI. The AI models run on Cloudflare's own network, under Cloudflare's terms, so the companies that made the models do not receive your information. This section describes what happens when these features are switched on.

We send Workers AI only:

• what you type in the guided journey, such as a description of what you enjoy or a question you ask on your journey pages (fixed rules, not AI, choose and rank your shortlist);
• text you write about your goals and results, for example a sentence typed into a search box or a description of what you enjoy;
• course information we hold, such as course descriptions, entry requirements and fees;
• for Saathi, our chat assistant: what you type or say to it (a recording is turned into text and not kept) and the last few messages of the conversation (when Saathi shows a signed in student their own case, it reads it from our records without sending it to AI);
• for an email a counsellor drafts with AI: your name, your application and its status, the documents we are waiting for and what the email should say;
• for a summary of your record for a counsellor: your record, including recent comments and emails;
• for document checks by our Application and Compliance teams: the documents uploaded for your application, so that AI can point out details a person should look at.

AI only raises flags and drafts. A member of staff checks every flag and every draft, and makes every decision. If you would rather we did not use AI with your information, tell your counsellor or email info@mieconnect.com.

If you type a sentence into a search box, it 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, labelled with a scrambled form of the text so that the text itself is not kept there. To limit use, we count requests for up to an hour against a scrambled form of your IP address.

Cloudflare processes this information as our processor, which means it may use it only on our instructions. Cloudflare's terms say that it does not use what we send to Workers AI to train AI models, and does not keep it once it has answered. You can read Cloudflare's privacy policy.

AI can be wrong. It can misread what you meant or suggest a course that does not suit you, so treat its answers as a starting point and check important details with your counsellor or the university. A counsellor makes the decisions about your applications, not the AI. 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. Our Acceptable use and AI page explains more.

Services that do not receive your personal information

• Our course catalogue comes from a separate course database run by our own team. We only read course, university, scholarship, pathway and entry requirement information from it. No student information is sent to it.
• To place UK universities on our maps, our servers look up universities' postcodes with postcodes.io, a free postcode service. Only university postcodes and locations are sent.
• The fonts on our website are served from our own website, so no font provider receives your IP address.

Automated decisions and profiling

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. We do use automated tools to suggest courses that match your answers, including the shortlist the guided journey builds, to read search sentences and suggest subjects (when our AI features are on), and to check that forms are filled in by people rather than bots. Your shortlist is a set of suggestions: your counsellor goes through it with you, and you choose what to apply for. If the bot check stops you sending a form, try again or email info@mieconnect.com.

Universities make their own admissions decisions. Some may use automated tools of their own, which their privacy policies describe.

International transfers

Studying abroad means your information often needs to travel.

• Our database and uploaded files are stored by Cloudflare in the EU. MIE Auth also stores its data in the EU.
• Cloudflare serves our website from data centres around the world, usually the one nearest you, so a request you make may be handled outside the UK.
• When you apply to a university in another country, we send your application there so that it can be considered.
• Our AI features and personal PDFs run on Cloudflare's network, which may handle them in data centres outside the UK and EU.
• Recruitment partners and some of our service providers, including Google and the providers of the optional tools above, are based outside the UK, many of them in the United States.

When we transfer personal information outside the UK, we make sure it is protected. We rely on the UK's adequacy regulations (for example for the EU), the UK Extension to the Data Privacy Framework for certified US companies, the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, or, for applications you ask us to send, the fact that the transfer is needed to provide the service you asked for. You can ask us for more detail or a copy of the safeguards.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it. When we no longer need it, we delete it or make it anonymous so that it can no longer identify you.

We moved our records to our current system in October 2026. Copies held by our previous systems and providers are covered by this policy, and we will delete them within 12 months of the move, or sooner where the periods above end sooner.

Keeping it secure

We use technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including these:

• All connections to our website are encrypted. Cloudflare encrypts our database and files when they are stored. Our database is kept in Europe, and our uploaded files in the EU.
• Uploaded documents can only be opened by you, the staff responsible for your record and the partner who referred you. Staff and partners see only the records their role allows.
• We store session tokens only in a scrambled form. Staff are signed out after 2 hours and students after 12 hours. Signed in pages cannot be shown inside other websites, which protects against a kind of trickery called clickjacking.
• MIE Auth lets you use a passkey and two step verification.
• We check the type and size of every uploaded file.
• Emails from our system can only go to the student on the record and the contacts assigned to it, not to any address a user types.
• Staff are trained in data protection when they join, and every change to a student record is logged with who made it and when.

No system is completely secure. Please keep your sign in details private. We will never ask you for your password or a sign in code. If we become aware of a breach that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will tell the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours where the law requires, and tell you without undue delay if the risk to you is high.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law, you have the right to:

• be informed about how we use your information, which is what this policy does;
• access the personal information we hold about you and receive a copy;
• correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• delete your information in certain circumstances;
• restrict how we use your information in certain circumstances;
• object to our use of your information where we rely on legitimate interests, and to direct marketing at any time;
• move information you gave us to another organisation, in a commonly used electronic format, where this applies;
• withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent;
• not be subject to decisions made only by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects on you;
• complain to us and to the Information Commissioner's Office (see "Complaints" below).

To use any of these rights, email info@mieconnect.com. You can also update your profile and study interest in the student portal, and ask to delete your account from your profile page. Your MIE Auth account is separate: to change or delete it, use MIE Auth or contact MH Global Group Limited at info@mieconnect.com.

We may need to confirm your identity first, usually by replying to the email address on your record. We will reply within one month. If your request is complex, we may take up to two more months and will tell you why. The time limit pauses while we wait for anything we need from you to confirm who you are or what you are asking for. There is normally no charge. If a request is clearly unfounded or excessive, we may charge a reasonable fee or refuse it, and we will explain why. A parent, guardian or someone else can make a request for you if you give them permission, or if they have legal authority to act for you.

When we delete your account, we delete or anonymise your information except what we must keep, for example records of applications we submitted and commission we received, which we keep for the periods above. Our portal says that deletion can take at least a week, and we complete it within one month.

Children and young people

Our services are for people aged 16 and over. We do not knowingly accept anyone under 16. If we learn that we hold information about someone under 16, we will close their account and delete their information unless we must keep it.

If you are 16 or 17, you can use our website and the student portal. The guided journey asks you for a parent's or guardian's email address. Before we submit any application for you, a parent or guardian must be involved and give their consent where it is needed. Universities and visa authorities have their own rules for students under 18. Our Safeguarding page explains how we look after young people.

Our optional Statistics and Marketing tools stay off unless you switch them on. If you are under 18, we suggest that you leave Marketing off. In India and Nigeria, the law treats everyone under 18 as a child and needs a parent's or guardian's consent: see the sections for those countries below.

Marketing

We will only send you marketing messages, such as news about events, scholarships and new courses, if you have agreed or the law otherwise allows. Every marketing email includes a way to unsubscribe, and you can ask us to stop at any time by emailing info@mieconnect.com. We will still send you messages you need about your enquiry or applications.

If you are in the EU or EEA

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to us when we offer our services to people in the European Union and the European Economic Area (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), and when we monitor how they use our website with optional tools. You have the same rights and we use the same lawful bases as described above.

You can complain to the data protection authority in the EU or EEA country where you live or work, or where you think the law was broken. The European Data Protection Board publishes a list of the authorities. The European Commission has decided that the UK protects personal data adequately, so information can travel from the EU to us without extra safeguards.

If you are in Bangladesh

Bangladesh's personal data protection law sets rules for handling the personal data of people in Bangladesh, and its parts come into force in stages. We follow it as it applies to us. Whatever stage it has reached, you can ask to know how your data is used, get a copy of it, have it corrected or erased, and withdraw your consent.

To use these rights, email info@mieconnect.com with "Bangladesh" in the subject line. We will reply within one month, or sooner if the Ordinance requires. If you are not happy with our reply, you can complain to the data protection authority that the law sets up. If the law requires some data to be kept in Bangladesh or limits sending it abroad, we will follow those rules.

If you are in India

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025 apply to us when we offer our services to people in India. Under this law we are a "Data Fiduciary", the organisation responsible for your data, and you are the "Data Principal". The Rules, made in November 2025, bring the duties in the Act into force in stages, with the last in 2027. We apply the rights below now.

Where we rely on your consent, we ask for it clearly, for the purposes we name, and you can withdraw it as easily as you gave it. Under the Act you have the right to:

• get a summary of the personal data we hold about you, how we use it, and who we have shared it with;
• have your data corrected, completed, updated or erased;
• have your concerns dealt with through our grievance process;
• name someone to use your rights for you if you die or become unable to act.

The Act treats everyone under 18 as a child. Before we process the personal data of a student in India aged 16 or 17, we need verifiable consent from a parent or lawful guardian, and we must not track, monitor the behaviour of, or target advertising at children. If you are under 18, the guided journey asks for your parent's or guardian's email address, and a counsellor contacts them and records their consent before we process your application. Our Statistics and Marketing tools never run while you are signed in, and we do not send marketing to anyone under 18.

To use your rights or raise a grievance, email info@mieconnect.com with "India" in the subject line. We aim to reply within one month, and will always reply within the 90 days the Rules allow. If you are not satisfied once our grievance process is complete, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India. You can ask for this notice in English or in any language listed in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India. Email us with the language you need and we will send you a translation. The Act also asks you not to give false information or pretend to be someone else.

If you are in Nigeria

The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 applies when we handle the personal data of people in Nigeria. The Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) enforces it, and its General Application and Implementation Directive 2025 explains how organisations must apply it. We will register or file with the NDPC whenever the law requires us to.

Under the Act you have the right to be informed, to access your data and receive a copy, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict how we use it, to object (including to direct marketing), to receive your data in a commonly used electronic format, to withdraw your consent, and not to be subject to decisions made only by automated means that significantly affect you. The Act treats everyone under 18 as a child, so we need a parent's or guardian's consent where we rely on consent for a student under 18.

To use these rights, email info@mieconnect.com with "Nigeria" in the subject line. We will reply within one month. If you are not happy with our reply, you can complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission. When we transfer your data outside Nigeria, we use the safeguards the Act recognises.

If you are in Pakistan

Pakistan does not yet have a comprehensive data protection law in force. The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 makes some misuse of personal and identity information a crime. When this policy was last updated, a Personal Data Protection Bill had been proposed but had not become law. We protect your information in the same way as everyone else's, and you can use the rights in "If you are anywhere else" below by emailing info@mieconnect.com with "Pakistan" in the subject line.

If you are in the United States

This section applies to residents of California and other US states with consumer privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CCPA), where those laws apply to us. We honour the requests below from anyone in the US, whether or not a law requires us to.

Notice at collection

We collect this information from you, your recruitment partner, universities and your use of our website, for the purposes in "How we use your information", and keep it for the periods in "How long we keep it". We disclose it for business purposes to the recipients in "Who we share it with". We use sensitive personal information only to provide our services and as the law allows, not to infer things about you, so the right to limit its use does not apply.

Selling and sharing

We do not sell personal information. Some US laws call it "sharing" when information is passed on for cross context behavioural advertising, which means adverts based on what you do across different websites. We do this only if you allow Marketing in our cookie banner: identifiers and internet activity then go to the Marketing tools we have switched on. In the last 12 months that was only Google Ads. Marketing stays off until you switch it on, and we do not sell or share the information of anyone we know to be under 16 unless they have switched it on themselves. To opt out, choose "Cookie settings" at the bottom of any page and switch Marketing off. We treat a Global Privacy Control signal as a request to opt out for that browser. We do not pass personal information to other companies for their own direct marketing.

Your rights and how to use them

Depending on your state, you have the right to know what personal information we collect, use and disclose, and to get a copy; to delete it; to correct it; to opt out of sale and sharing; and to appeal if we refuse your request. We will not treat you differently, for example by giving you a worse service, because you used your rights.

Email info@mieconnect.com with "US privacy request" in the subject line. We will check your identity by matching details on our records, usually your email address. Someone you authorise can make a request for you with your signed permission. We will confirm that we have your request within 10 business days and reply within 45 days, or tell you if we need up to 45 more. If we refuse your request, you can appeal by replying with "Appeal" in the subject line, and we will reply within the time your state's law sets. If you are not happy with our answer, you can contact your state's Attorney General.

If you are anywhere else

Wherever you live, you can ask us what personal information we hold about you and get a copy, ask us to correct or delete it, object to how we use it, and withdraw your consent where we rely on it. Email info@mieconnect.com and we will reply within one month. If your country has a data protection regulator, you can also complain to it.

Links to other websites

Our website links to universities, colleges, WhatsApp and other organisations. They have their own privacy policies and we are not responsible for how they use your information. Please read their policies before you share information with them.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, please contact us first at info@mieconnect.com so that we can try to put it right. Our Complaints procedure explains what happens next.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK regulator for data protection. You can contact the ICO through its website, by phone on 0303 123 1113, or by post at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. If you live outside the UK, you can complain to your own regulator, as the sections above explain.

Changes to this policy

We review this policy regularly and update it when our services or the law change. The date at the top of the page shows when it was last updated. If we make a significant change, we will tell you by email or through the portal before it takes effect.