Staying safe in group chats and online

Group chats and social media can be a popular way to stay connected. Find out how to protect your privacy, set boundaries and stay safe online.

Support is here for you

Make a report - use Report + Support to confidentially report a concern, an incident that occurred, or to make a disclosure about your own or someone else's safety and well-being so we can best support you.
Talk to someone - Dignity and Respect Advisers are staff volunteers trained to listen and provide confidential guidance on issues related to bullying, harassment, and sexual misconduct.
If you are unsure- you can reach out to your School Wellbeing Team or Clerkenwell and Moorgate students can submit an enquiry via Support@City to get connected with the right support.Tooting students can email the Student Support Hub.

Protect your privacy

On group chats and social media, anyone can claim to be a student. Be careful not to share personal information - your home address, passwords, banking details or documents like your passport, especially in spaces where you don't personally know and trust everyone. Anything you send can be forwarded, saved or screenshotted.

Check your Settings → Privacy on your messaging apps:

Who can message you or add you to groups? You can set this to "contacts only." The default is often "everyone."
Who can see your location? Only share your location with people you know and trust.
Is your profile public or private? A public profile can be seen by anyone.

Set boundaries

You can decide who reaches you. If you ever feel uncomfortable, you can:

Block - stop someone from contacting you
Mute - silence notifications from a group chat or user
Leave - exit a group chat
Restrict - limit what someone can see of you
Report - flag a user to the platform.

If you ever feel unsafe you can always reach out to your Student Support Services.

Spot fake accounts

Every year, groups appear across platforms including Facebook, Discord, WhatsApp and Snapchat, using the City St George's name or logo. Most of these are not run by the University, and some are set up to collect personal information, push scams, or sell tickets.

Rule of thumb: the University does not run Freshers groups or pages on social media. Official Welcome events are only listed on the Students' Union and City St George's websites

Be cautious of unknown links
Be cautious of offers that seem too good to be true
Don't share your personal information

If you are planning to set up a social media account for a society- please ensure to check with the Students’ Union first and review the rules in the Student Social Media Guidelines.

To learn more about different scams targeting students please visit our Safety online page. If you think you have been scammed please reach out to your Student Support teams via Support@City.

Respect and conduct

Everyone in the City St George's community should uphold these values, on campus and online:

Inclusive - This means ensuring everyone feels welcome and is valued.
Respectful - This means being mindful of how language, behaviour and assumptions impact others.
Supportive - This means challenging inappropriate behaviour, offering help when needed, and contributing to a culture of kindness.
Always learning - This means being open to feedback and reflecting on and understanding experiences unlike your own.

As set out in the Student Charter, City St George's students should treat fellow students with respect, as equal and valued members of our community. Discrimination, harassment, bullying and hate incidents are never tolerated.

If you have witnessed or experienced unacceptable behaviour, you can report it via Report + Support and get the support you need. You can also reach out to Dignity and Respect Advisers. Please see the list of support services here for you.

Mind your digital footprint

Your digital footprint is everything about you that's findable online - posts, profiles and comments. It's part of your online identity, and it's what people see when they search for you.

City St George's is the University of the business, practice and the professions, and many of you are heading into careers where professional conduct is part of the job. It's worth remembering:

Anything you send in a chat can be screenshotted, saved and forwarded by anyone in it
Placement providers, job interviewers and professional bodies do look at public profiles
What's public becomes part of how people meet you before they meet you.

If you are worried about something you have said or posted you can always reach out to Dignity and Respect advisers.

Set the tone

If you have set up a group chat - it can help to set the tone for a kind space by creating a few ground rules. These can be pinned or added to the chat description. Feel free to adapt our template:

Be kind, respectful and inclusive, everyone should feel welcome.
Don't share personal information. Anything you send can be forwarded, saved or screenshotted.
You can leave the chat anytime, no explanation needed.

What the University can and can't do

We can listen, talk through your options, help you put practical measures in place, support you with your studies if this is affecting them, and take disciplinary action where a student is involved and can be identified.

Where it's harder: we can't remove content from platforms we don't run, and where accounts are anonymous there's often a limit to how far anyone can trace them.

external platforms