Thank you for visiting the U.S. Department of Agriculture website and
reviewing our privacy statement. Our privacy policy is clear: 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:
Information Collected and Stored Automatically
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 the U.S. Department of Agriculture 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 are using. We do not track or record information about
individuals and their visits.
If You Send Us Personal Information
If you choose to provide us with personal information, as in an e-mail to
the Secretary or someone else or by filling out a form with your personal information
and submitting it to us through our website, we use that information to respond
to your message and to help us locate for you the information you have requested.
We treat e-mails the same way that we regard letters sent to the U.S. Department
of Agriculture. We are required to maintain many documents under the Presidential
Records Act for historical purposes, but we do not collect personal information
for any purpose other than to respond to you. We only share the information
you give us with another government agency if your inquiry relates to that agency,
or as otherwise required by law. Moreover, we do not create individual profiles
with the information you provide or give it to any private organizations. The
U.S. Department of Agriculture does not collect information for commercial marketing.
When You Visit USDA Agency/Staff Office Websites
Please read the USDA Agency/Staff Office Privacy Statement when you
visit those websites. Where necessary, an Agency/Staff Office may have
additional privacy criteria, conditions, or information that you should
know.
Links to Other Sites
Our website has links to many other federal agencies. In a few cases we
link to private organizations, with their permission. Once you access another
site through a link that we provide you are subject to the privacy policy of
the new site.
Website Security
Information presented on the USDA website is considered public
information and may be distributed or copied. Use of appropriate
byline/photo/image credits is requested.
- For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains
available to all users, this government computer system employs software
programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload
or change information, or otherwise cause damage.
- Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, no other
attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Raw data
logs are used for no other purposes and are scheduled for regular destruction
in accordance with National Archives and Records Administration
General Schedule 20.
- 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 and the
National
Information Infrastructure Protection Act.
Comments or Questions
If you have any comments or questions about the information presented
here please forward them to howard.baker@usda.gov
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998
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