We will collect no personal information about you when you visit our website unless you choose to provide that information to us. Here is how we handle information about your visit to our website:
If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the website, read pages, or download information, we will gather and store certain information about your visit automatically. This information does not identify you personally. We automatically collect and store only the following information about your visit:
- The Internet domain (for example, "xcompany.com" if you use a private Internet access account, or "yourschool.edu" if you connect from a university's domain), and IP address (an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web) from which you access our website,
- The type of browser and operating system used to access our site,
- The date and time you access our site,
- The pages you visit, and,
- If you linked to our website from another website, the address of that website.
We use this information to help us make our site more useful to visitors — to learn about the number of visitors to our site and the types of technology our visitors use. We do not track or record information about individuals and their visits.
Our Website has links to other federal agencies and to private organizations. Once you link to another site, it is that site's privacy policy that controls what it collects about you.
When inquiries are e-mailed to us, we again store the text of your message and e-mail address information so that we can answer the question that was sent in and send the answer back to the e-mail address provided.
We do not retain the messages with identifiable information or the e-mail addresses for more than 10 days after responding unless your communication requires further inquiry. If you send us an e-mail message in which you ask us to do something that requires further inquiry on our part, there are a few things you should know.
The material you submit may be seen by various people in our department who may use it to look into the matter you have inquired about. If we do retain it, it is protected by the Privacy Act of 1974, which restricts our use of it, but permits certain disclosures.
Also, e-mail is not necessarily secure against interception. If your communication is very sensitive, or includes personal information, you might want to send it by postal mail instead.