Thank you for visiting the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) Web site. You are accessing a computer system operated by PBGC, a wholly-owned corporation of the United States Government. It is for authorized use only, in compliance with the PBGC Electronic Communications Policy and federal laws, and when use is authorized, such use may not exceed the scope of authorization.

The privacy of people using our Web site is a vital concern to PBGC. As a general rule, PBGC does not collect personal identifying information; however, PBGC does collect certain information for system management and site security purposes.

System Management: As part of system management, PBGC uses various software tools and computing methods to insure this site is operating in an optimum manner and to identify what information is of the most and least interest to its users. We do not collect or sell information about you for commercial purposes. Among the information that currently is collected by PBGC for system management are:

• The name of the domain from which you access the Internet (for example, www.altavista.com);
• The type of browser and operating system used to access our site;
• The date and time you access our site;
• The Internet address of the Web site from which you linked directly to our site; and,
• The pages and files you access on this site.

Please note that none of this information identifies you personally in any way.

Site Security: For security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, PBGC also employs software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. No attempts are made to identify individual users unless illegal behavior is suspected. Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996, or other such laws as may apply.

Cookies: Cookies are small datafiles sent to your computer by Web sites you visit. Cookies store information about you and the type of computer you use to access the Web site. These files may contain personal information. There are two types of cookies: session and persistent. Session cookies expire once the user closes the browser. Persistent cookies, however, remain on your system for an extended period of time.

In accordance with federal policy, PBGC does not use persistent cookies on its Web site. If you search the General Counsel's database of opinion letters, you will be doing so on a contractor-operated Web site, which is outside PBGC. This external Web site uses session cookies (but not persistent cookies). The session cookies are intended to assist you as you search the database, and as stated above, expire once you close your browser.

Email: If you choose to contact PBGC via electronic mail, please be aware that the information you send will be used only for the purposes described at the point of collection and detailed in our Privacy Act Notice. However, due to the nature of the Internet and the World Wide Web, we cannot assure the security of the information during transmission by electronic mail over the public Internet. Thus, you may be uncomfortable with sending personal information (such as your SSN number, bank account number, or home phone number and address) over the Internet. If so, we suggest that you send the information to PBGC by regular mail or contact PBGC by telephone. See Contact Information for appropriate addresses and telephone numbers.