The impact of COVID-19 has been widespread and far-reaching, and one domain that has experienced severe disruption is the university education sector, where the entire apparatus of teaching and assessment for many programmes of study had to move on-line in a matter of days 10. This was accomplished notably through enormous cooperation between staff and students in educational institutions (Adnan and Anwar, 2020). The negative economic impacts of COVID-19 on university students has been highlighted in terms of poor access to online resources, delayed graduation and lost internships with this effect felt more keenly by students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Aucejo, et al. 2020). However, an issue that has been less reported is how the crisis highlighted mismatches between on the one hand the regulations and requirements of the educational institutions, and on the other hand the privacy rights (and needs) of the students.