Legal Information
The concept of online privacy includes the right to decide
what personal information you choose to submit online, and
how that information will be used, if at all. To protect user
privacy, GPO follows Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
recommendations and other suggestions regarding Internet privacy
policy for Federal Government Web sites. In doing so, we strive
to make users aware of the kinds of information we collect
from them, explaining why we collect that information, how
we use it, and whether it will be shared with others.
Information Collected Automatically
When users surf the GPO Web site or hosted
Federal Web sites, GPO collects the following
data for statistical purposes only:
- the IP address from which users access
our Web site;
- the date and time of their visits;
- the URLs of the pages that they view;
- WAIS searches and retrievals, including
search terms.
We use these statistics to make improvements to GPO.gov, not to identify individual users or their searches.
We do not enable cookies to monitor usage or to gather users’ personal
information.
Information Collected via Correspondence with GPO
Personal information submitted by a user in comments or questions via phone,
fax, or e-mail is not distributed to parties outside of GPO. Identifying
information, such as name, e-mail address, and phone or fax number, is used
only for responding to users' comments or questions, and is not made available
for other purposes.
Definition
- Cookies:
Cookies are small pieces of information that
Web servers or pages store on a user’s
hard drive. There are two types of cookies:
session cookies and persistent cookies. Both
types of cookies allow Internet servers to "remember" specific
information about a user. Web sites use them
primarily to personalize their sites for
individual users, to keep track of orders
when users purchase products, and to target
advertising toward users based on the information
that they access. However, session cookies
will "remember" that information for only
as long as you explore a Web site during
one "session", or visit to the Web site.
Session cookies will not "remember" information
about you when you return to the site for
subsequent visits. However, persistent cookies
will "remember" this information for more
than one session. OMB has decided that persistent
cookies should not be allowed on Government
Web sites, except in "the most unusual of
circumstances." GPO currently follows this
recommendation.
Security
Site security is the concept of monitoring network
traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change
information on GPO's servers.
In the case that suspicious activity of this
sort arises, a user's personal information
may be tracked to identify a possible threat.
This is the only reason that GPO will ever
collect personal information and/or monitor
user activity without asking permission or
giving prior notice.
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