The Marine Protected Areas
of the United States Web site is jointly managed by the U.S.
Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Direct administration of the computer systems is handled by
the National Marine Protected Areas Center, National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration. Information presented on these
pages is considered public information and may be distributed
or copied. Use of appropriate photo and image credits is requested.
Agency seals and logos cannot be used without the written
permission of the agency.
Visitor information collected by the Web
servers is necessary in order to share their contents with
visitors. (View visitors rights under the Privacy
Act). The technical information collected (see
example below) identifies what part of the Web site
a visiting computer wishes to reach, and where to send the
requested information once it is found. For site management,
this technical information is also used for statistical
analysis. Summary statistics are used for such purposes
as assessing what information is of most and least interest,
identifying usage trends over time, determining technical
design specifications, and identifying system performance
or problem areas. This Web site collects no personally identifiable
visitor information unless the visitor chooses to provide
it.
Any additional visitor information collected
on the site is for a specific purpose identified on the
site. Submitting voluntary information constitutes visitor
consent to the use of the information for the stated purpose.
Electronic mail sent to addresses listed
on this Web site is treated no differently than any other
electronic mail. All electronic mail transactions are handled
by electronic mail servers, and do not pass through this
Web site, nor are they monitored or recorded by this site
in any way.
This Web site does not use Web "cookies."
For site security purposes and to ensure
that this service remains available to all users, this government
computer system employs hardware and software to monitor
network traffic and to identify unauthorized attempts to
add or alter information, or otherwise cause damage or interfere
with information delivery. Except for computer security
or law enforcement investigations, no attempt is made to
identify individual users or their usage habits. Raw data
logs may be stored indefinitely for use in statistical analysis
or to protect the security and integrity of the computer
system.
Unauthorized attempts to add information
or alter information on this service are strictly prohibited
and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse
Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure
Protection Act.
Please note that other Department of Commerce
and Department of the Interior Web sites may have different
information collection practices. If interested, please
consult their site-specific privacy statements for details
on such policies.
If you have any questions or comments about
the information presented here, please forward them to mpaweb@noaa.gov.
(top)
Example of information collected
by this Web site
Web servers keep a record of their activity in a log file.
Every time a visiting computer requests a file from the
Web server, a log entry is recorded. A typical log file
entry for the Marine Protected Areas of the United States
Web site looks like this:
10/04/00 13:19:18 OK 200 somemachine.somenetwork.com
Mozilla/4.75 (Macintosh; U; PPC)
http://othermachine.othernetwork.com/neatsites.html "mpa.gov"
:welcome.html 15208
What this entry means:
- 10/04/00 13:19:18 --
Date and time of the request (24-hour clock).
- OK 200 -- Status code
of the request. "OK" and a status code of "200"
are equivalent; they mean the requested file was successfully
found and delivered to the requesting (visitor's) computer.
- somemachine.somenetwork.com
-- Internet address (or IP address, in the form of 123.123.123.123)
of the requesting computer. The last part of the address,
.com, indicates the requesting computer is on a commercial
network. Other commonly seen addresses end in .mil (U.S.
military), .net (a different category of commercial network),
.org (non-profit organization), .gov (U.S. government
agencies, state and Federal), etc. Depending on how the
requesting computer is connected to the Internet, this
may not identify a specific computer.
- Mozilla/4.75 (Macintosh; U; PPC)
-- Type of browser used by the requesting computer.
- http://othermachine.othernetwork.com/neatsites.html
-- The Internet address of the last site visited by the
requesting computer, useful in discovering how visitors
found this Web site.
- "mpa.gov"
-- The Internet address of this Web site. As it is possible
to operate several Web sites on a single computer, the
Web server uses this information to determine which Web
site should handle the request.
- :welcome.html -- The
name of the file requested by the visiting computer.
- 15208 -- Size of the
requested file, in bytes.