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Privacy Policy


Privacy on the students.gov website

Thank you for visiting our website. Our privacy policy is simple and straightforward:

  1. We collect no personal information about you unless you choose to provide that information to us. We do not use persistent "cookies" or other techniques for collecting personal information about you without your knowledge. We do use temporary cookies for two purposes: first, to match you as you move from page to page with the set of memory variables created during your user session (this is referred to as "maintaining state" in the "stateless" environment of the web); and second, to keep track of how many people visit students.gov’s pages.
  2. In the normal course of events, we share your information with no outside organizations. We collect no information for commercial marketing purposes.

This policy discloses the privacy practices for the students.gov website. However, our site contains links to other web sites. We can make no promises about the privacy practices of other websites. Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy and security policies of the new site.

We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any site you link to from ours, especially if you share any personal information. Be informed. You are the person best qualified to protect your own privacy. If you want to know more about how we record non-personal information about your visit or how we use information that you voluntarily submit, read on.

Otherwise, enjoy your visit!

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Non-personal Information | Information from E-mail | Security policy

Non-personal information we record

If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the students.gov website, read pages, or click on the links on our topic pages, our site's operating system will automatically record some general information about your visit. During your visit, our web operating system will record:

  1. The Internet domain for your Internet service, such as "Xcompany.com", "Xcompany.net", or "yourschool.edu".
  2. The type of browser you use (such as "Netscape version X" or "Internet Explorer version X").
  3. The type of operating system you are using (such as Macintosh, Unix, or Windows).
  4. The date and time you visit our site, and the web pages that you visit on our site.
  5. The address of the previous website you were visiting, if you linked to us from another website.

We use this information for statistical analysis, to help us make our site more useful to visitors. This tracking system does not record any personal information about individuals.

Information from e-mail you send to us

If you decide to send us an email message, the message will usually contain your return e-mail address. If you include personal information in your e-mail message because you want us to address issues specific to your situation, we may use that information in contacting other federal agencies. These federal agencies are governed by the Privacy Act, and will handle your private information in the way required by that Act. Also, you should understand that e-mail is not necessarily secure against interception. You should not include sensitive information like your Social Security number in any email message.

Security policy

For site security purposes and to make sure 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. Unauthorized attempts to upload or change information on this site are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act. Server logs are scheduled for regular destruction in accordance with the National Archives and Records Administration General Schedule 20.

The students.gov website is provided as a public service through the U.S. Department of Education, which pays for and maintains this site. Information presented on the site is considered public information and may be distributed or copied. Use of the appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested.

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