The Office of Coast Survey (OCS), an Office of the National Ocean Service (NOS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration (NOAA), states that links to non-Federal Government Web sites do not imply endorsement of any particular product, service, organization, company, information provider or content (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement exceptions).

The Office of Coast Survey (OCS), also operates this World Wide Web server as a public service. Information presented on these pages is considered public information and may be distributed or copied. Use of appropriate photo and image credits is requested.

In accordance with OMB Standard 5 - Privacy Policy and Information Collection, the information that NOS, OCS collects from the public (Privacy Act Issuances) and (Privacy Act Information) is submitted, voluntarily (we collect no personally identifiable information about you when you visit our site unless you choose to provide that information to us and submitting voluntary information constitutes your consent to the use of the information for the stated purpose) through the ENC Support and Information Request page (Organization, Organization Type, ENC Use, E-mail, State, Country and request to be added to the NOAA ENC News Mailing List); Nautical Chart Product Discrepancy Report Webpage; Nautical Chart Product Inquiry Webpage; the NOAA internal Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) page (E-mail); and the US Power Squadron (USPS) Cooperative Charting Program page (Certificate Number, User type, Password, NOAA Form 77-4 input). The ENC page information request is to track where our data and/or products are being downloaded and to notify users of any updates or problems. The Discrepancy and Inquiry pages are available to the public for submitting questions and/or comments about charting products. User information is collected only for responding to the questions or comments. The NOAA internal AUV page requests internal E-mail addresses to form a NOAA collaborative effort/workshop for AUV technology. The Cooperative Charting Program page is a seamless mechanism to handle field data collected by USPS members only. When you submit your E-mail addresss (which could contain your full name) to us we will keep that information on file but only to use for the purposes stated.

In addition, all web servers need to collect technical information in order to share their contents with visitors. The technical information (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 purposes. 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. These aggregate statistical summaries are posted on the Web site and are available to the public.

Electronic mail sent to addresses listed on this site are treated no differently than any other electronic mail. All electronic mail transactions are handled by electronic mail servers and do not pass through this site nor are they monitored or recorded by this site in any way.

This site does not use Persistent Tracking Technologies

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 authorized 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 National Ocean Service 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 this information, please contact Barbara.Hess@noaa.gov

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 Office of Coast Survey 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 "chartmaker.ncd.noaa.noaa.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 (US military), .net (a different category of commercial network), .org (non-profit organization), .gov (US 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.

"chartmaker.ncd.noaa.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.

If interested, you may also read the National Ocean Service Privacy Policy

Revised Monday August 30 2004by OCS Webmaster