Use of Google Apps in Computer Science

Last Reviewed 2021-06-28

Faculty, Staff, and Graduate students have access to the department's Google Suite for Education. Undergraduate students are encouraged to use Office 365 from ITS.

The department has activated most, but not all of the Google Apps that are available to the cs.unc.edu domain. Only the core services are covered under the end user license agreement into which UNC and Google entered. These include:

Calendar
Classroom
Directory and Contacts
Drive and Docs
Gmail
Google Chrome Sync
Groups for Business
Keep
Sites
Tasks

Other Google Apps are not covered by that agreement. When using these other apps, please take care to conform to campus policies, as it may be inappropriate to use these other Apps for conducting University business.

While we have approval to use the corse services with personal information, very sensitive data, such as HIPAA and PCI data, should not be stored in Google Drive. Such material is best stored in Office 365 from ITS. Please use the contact button on this page or email help@cs.unc.edu if you want more information on safe storage of sensitive data.

Data stored in the uncovered Apps may be accessible to Google for marketing purposes, so you must take care to insure that you are not putting at risk any information that might be considered sensitive data or University intellectual property. For example, it would be inappropriate to store or process grades, personally identifying information, or unreleased research findings using the Apps that are not covered by our agreement with Google.

Also, when you use any Apps that are available via the department's Google Apps domain, you are doing so while logged into a University account and are subject to University policies for security and data protection as well as to the Honor Code.

Google Storage Limits

In 2021, Google announced a storage policy that provides universities with a baseline of pooled storage shared across all users. In response to this change, CS was forced to set limits on storage usage. This includes files stored in Drive, Gmail, and Photos. The current storage limits are currently:

• 5GB for shared drives
• 15GB for alums and retirees
• 100GB for staff
• 500GB for graduate students and non-CS recharge groups
• 1TB for faculty

As of Fall 2016, undergraduate student accounts will not include a Google Apps For Education account.

If you need to additional space, you can request a team OneDrive from campus ITS by calling 962-HELP or starting a chat at help.unc.edu.