GitHub: Recommended privacy settings

Students and instructors can create personal accounts on GitHub.com through GitHub Education. We recommend students and faculty ensure their projects, repositories, and profiles use appropriate privacy settings.

Updating account privacy settings

To comply with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and protect University data, the Office of Information Technology recommends taking steps to keep your account and repositories private:

GitHub is public by default. Set your GitHub profile to private to keep certain content and activity hidden from your page. Additionally, change your repositories to private.

Opt out of GitHub Copilot using your data for training.

Considerations for instructors and faculty

Github.com is replacing the University’s GitHub Enterprise server. To help you consider whether this is an appropriate tool for your class, review Evaluating a New Tech Tool.

Because github.com is a public site, extra caution should be taken to not expose sensitive information. Learn more about FERPA and protecting student data.