Opt out
By default, Pitt releases your name, address, phone, major, dates of attendance, degrees — even your photo — to anyone who asks, and never tells you.
Read this before you file it. The opt-out is blunt and all-or-nothing. Once it’s on, Pitt won’t confirm anything about you to an outside party — not your enrollment, not your degree, not your dates of attendance. Employers, background-check companies, and loan or insurance verifiers get told Pitt has no record of you until you personally authorize each one, and it stays in force until you rescind it in writing.
Worth it for some people; a real headache if you’re job-hunting or renting. Go in knowing the cost.
- Get the form. Open the Registrar’s Request to Restrict Disclosure of Directory Information.
- Send it in. Email the completed form to registration@registrar.pitt.edu.
Flip a setting
New Outlook and the web app quietly load tracking pixels hidden in your mail — tiny remote images that report back when, where, and on what device you opened it.
Two things to keep in mind once you’ve flipped it: your Pitt mailbox is university-owned, so it’s never private from Pitt itself; and blocking images stops the pixel, not the fact that a sender already knows your address is real.
- Classic Outlook (desktop). File → Options → Trust Center → Trust Center Settings → Automatic Download, then check “Don’t download pictures automatically.” Load images by hand only for senders you trust.
- Web / new Outlook. Microsoft is still rolling image controls out in 2026, and what you can change may be set by Pitt’s tenant — the reliable toggle is in the classic desktop app. On the web, treat unexpected images as a flag and don’t click “Download pictures” on mail you don’t trust.
Know this
An instructor can pull a report showing which course pages you opened and when, see participation analytics, and read every submission timestamp — and most of it isn’t yours to switch off.
What you can control: your notification settings and how much shows on your Canvas profile. That’s about the extent of it.
On proctoring: Respondus LockDown Browser locks down the exam browser; its add-on, Respondus Monitor, records you and your surroundings by webcam for the instructor to review. Pitt’s Teaching Center recommends against personal-device proctoring and supports Respondus only at its own Testing Center — Testing-Center computers, human proctors, no webcam. But the tools stay enabled in Pitt’s Canvas, and a school, department, or instructor can switch them on. Whether you’re webcam-proctored is their call, not something the University blocks for you.
So check before the exam. A course that requires a lockdown or webcam tool should say so in the syllabus or exam instructions. If it doesn’t, ask — before test day, not during.
Do this
A personal or public AI login sits outside every Pitt agreement — what you type goes on that vendor’s ordinary consumer terms.
Protected — via Pitt Passport
Claude for EducationAnthropic
Microsoft 365 Copilot ChatMicrosoft
Google GeminiGoogle
NotebookLMGoogleNot protected — the public versions
ChatGPTOpenAICopilot for WebMicrosoft · copilot.microsoft.com… and anything you open without signing in through Pitt — same tool, consumer terms.
Through Pitt Passport, the left column runs on the University’s enterprise terms: per Pitt, your inputs aren’t used to train the models, contractual safeguards apply, and administrators see only anonymized, aggregate usage — not your individual chats. Watch the branding: Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat through Pitt is covered; Copilot for Web at copilot.microsoft.com is the same name, different tool, and isn’t.
One thing to keep straight: this is a contractual protection, not a technical one. What you type still leaves your device and is stored by the vendor under those terms — “private” here means governed by an agreement, not that no one on the other end receives it.
- Sign in with Pitt. Go to the tool (e.g., claude.ai, gemini.google.com), enter your pitt.edu email, and you’ll be sent to Pitt Passport to log in.
- Pick the right account. On Claude, if you’ve also used a personal account on your Pitt email, choose the one labeled Pitt Enterprise plan — that’s the protected one.
Flip a setting
Your phone already hides its hardware ID with a private address — the risk is a setting mode, or a campus network, that quietly turns that protection off.
- Set it to Fixed. iPhone: Settings → Wi-Fi → (i) next to the network → Private Wi-Fi Address → Fixed. Android: Wi-Fi → the network → Privacy → “Use randomized MAC.” Fixed hides your real address and shows each network a different one — without breaking networks that recognize your device.
- In dorms, stay on MyResNet-5G. It works with a private address on. MyResNet-6G is faster but won’t connect unless you switch the private address off, exposing your real hardware ID — skip it unless you need the speed.
- In academic buildings, you’re on PittNet. Select WIRELESS-PITTNET; a Fixed private address works there the same as anywhere else.
Skip “Rotating” on campus: it changes your address every couple of weeks — fine for open public Wi-Fi, but it makes MyResNet treat you as a brand-new device each time. As for eduroam, which you’ll also see on campus: here it runs over the same equipment as PittNet and signs you in with your Pitt account, so on privacy it’s no different — Pitt steers students to PittNet for a steadier connection, not for privacy. What sets eduroam apart is what it does elsewhere: it’s the network Pitt people use at other campuses, and it always authenticates back through your home institution — so a login at another school is a record, routed through Pitt, that you were there. PittNet VPN (GlobalProtect) is a separate thing: secure access to Pitt resources, not a way to hide traffic from the network you’re on — that’s the consumer-VPN conversation, over on Tools.
Know this
Every POGOH ride logs the station you took and the one you returned to, with timestamps — tied to your name and your card. Free for 30 minutes isn’t free of a record.
Three companies help run that record: Lyft Urban Solutions (the trip backend), Authorize.net (payments), and Zendesk (support). The policy says some of this may be stored and processed outside the US.
The fair part, in the same breath: the policy limits use to the purpose it was collected for and says POGOH keeps no geolocation data — so what exists is station-level trip history, not live location tracking. Two lines in the rider agreement are worth knowing anyway: your trip data is treated as conclusive evidence of how long you had a bike (Section 2.14), and you agree that police can stop any rider and ask for the card or ID tied to it (Section 2.22).
None of this is a reason not to ride. It’s the record that comes with the ride, and you can’t opt out of it while you use the service — same as the five above.
Get involved
It’s free, open to everyone at Pitt, and joining takes about a minute.
No dues, no experience needed. Come to a meeting, or leave your name and we’ll tell you when the next one is.