Privacy Policy

For the purposes of the Law on Personal Data, the owner of the personal data collected through this site is Azerbaijan Technical University.

Browsing this site as a reader asks for nothing that identifies you. There are only five ways information reaches our servers, and two of them — the chat and the contact form — store what you wrote:

The site sets one cookie. The other three items are not cookies — they live in your browser's own storage and are never sent to us.

You can delete all of these from your browser settings. Doing so does not break the site — you simply return to the default language and theme.

The chat assistant in the corner of the site collects more than anything else here, so it is described separately. Using it is entirely optional — nothing is collected unless you open it and write.

When you send a message we store: the full text of what you wrote, the assistant's reply, the conversation id, your IP address, and timestamps. The IP address also serves a security purpose — a conversation can only be continued from the network that started it.

To produce a reply, your message and the earlier messages in that conversation are sent to a language model operated by OpenAI (gpt-4o). This is the only place where words you have written leave the university's own servers. The transfer happens server to server; your browser does not contact OpenAI directly.

Using the form on the Contact page is optional. When you send it, the name, email address, subject and message you typed, together with the page language (az or en) and the time it was sent, are stored in a database on the university's own server. They are used only to read your enquiry and to reply to the email address you gave; that address is not added to any mailing list or used for anything else.

The administrative dashboard is protected by a separate password and two-step verification. Marking a message as read and deleting it are recorded in the dashboard's activity log; the log records only the message's number, not its text or the sender's details.

Some pages display content served by outside providers. When you open such a page your browser contacts that provider directly, and it can see your IP address, your browser details and which page you came from. That exchange is outside the university's control.

The site's typefaces are served from the university's own server, so no request goes to Google for fonts. Video embedded by editors in news and announcements can only come from YouTube, Vimeo or Google Drive/Docs addresses.

Article 9.6 of the Law on Personal Data sets out a limited list of grounds for processing. On this site:

• Processing that follows from the university's duty as a public legal entity to inform the public — running the site, remembering your language, and counting visits in aggregate — rests on the ground of processing provided for by legislation (Article 9.6.2).
• Use of the AI assistant is entirely voluntary and rests on your consent (Article 9.6.1). Choosing not to use it has no effect on the rest of the site.
• Use of the contact form is also voluntary and rests on your consent (Article 9.6.1): by sending it you agree to what you wrote being processed so that your enquiry can be answered. You can always write to aztu@aztu.edu.az directly instead.

The site does not set out to collect special categories of personal data (racial or national origin, family life, religious belief, health, or criminal conviction).

• Daily visit counters are kept indefinitely — they are numbers only and relate to no one in particular.
• The encrypted daily fingerprints used to count repeat visitors are deleted automatically after 400 days.
• Chat transcripts and the IP address attached to them are not currently deleted automatically; they remain until an administrator removes them. You can ask us to delete your conversation using the contact details below.
• Messages sent through the contact form are kept until a member of staff deletes them. An automatic deletion period has not yet been approved; once it is set, it will be stated here. You can ask us to delete your message using the contact details below.
• Language and theme preferences live only in your browser and remain until you clear them.

Article 14 of the Law on Personal Data permits cross-border transfer only where the receiving country ensures an equivalent level of protection, or where the data subject has consented.

The only outbound flow on this site is the AI assistant: your message is passed to OpenAI so that a reply can be generated. By using the chat you consent to that transfer. If you would rather not, simply do not use it — every official channel for information and applications is available without it.

Separately, when the embedded content listed in section 6 loads, your browser connects directly to those companies' servers.

Article 7 of the Law on Personal Data gives you, among others, the following rights:

1. 1To know whether personal data about you exists and who owns it.
2. 2To require the legal justification for its collection, processing and disclosure to third parties.
3. 3To see the content of the data.
4. 4To know the purpose, duration and methods of processing, and who may see the data.
5. 5To require correction or destruction of the data.
6. 6To require that its collection and processing be prohibited.
7. 7To know the source of the data and require proof that it was obtained lawfully.
8. 8To require that the data be protected.

Under Article 12 we must answer free of charge within 7 working days, extendable by a further 7 working days where a third party has to be consulted. A refusal must be reasoned and given within 5 working days.

Send your request to the university's official email address. If you want a chat conversation deleted, including the conversation id stored in your browser will help us find it. For a message you sent through the contact form, write from the email address you gave in the form — that is how we find the message, and it shows the request comes from you.

Under Article 7.4, if you are not satisfied with our answer you may complain to the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport, which is the competent authority for personal data, or go directly to court. On questions about access to public information you may also approach the Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman) of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The site is served to every visitor over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), with additional protective headers applied at the browser level. The administrative dashboard is behind separate authentication and is not reachable by visitors to the public site.

No transmission over the internet can be guaranteed absolutely secure. If you find a security weakness on this site, please write to aztu@aztu.edu.az.

This site is intended for a general audience and does not set out to collect information from children. There is no registration or account that would ask for an age.

This document is updated as the site changes. The date of the last revision is shown at the top of the page. Any change that materially alters what is collected, or why, will be reflected clearly here.