Thank you for visiting our web site. Protecting the personal privacy of individuals who use the Internet is a priority of ours, and we appreciate the opportunity to describe to you the policies we have put in place to safeguard the privacy of individuals who visit our Web site. If you have questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this website, you can contact webmaster@dpc.senate.gov.

Our basic Internet privacy policy is simple: our web site collects no personal information about you when you visit the site unless you choose to provide that information to us during your visit so that we can contact you about an issue you have raised or help you with a problem. Let us describe more specifically the type of information that may be gathered when you visit our web site and how that information is handled.

Information Collected and Stored Automatically

The U.S. Senate collects aggregate data about visits to Senate web sites, such as statistics that show which parts of each web site were visited the most. The following information is also collected when you visit any U.S. Senate web site: the domain from which you access the Senate web site, the date and time of your visit, the pages you visit, and the address of the web site, if any, that provided the link from which you reached the Senate site. This information is gathered only for the purpose of enabling us to improve the online service we provide to visitors to Senate web sites.

No individual identifying or personal information (such as your name) is automatically gathered when you visit any Senate web site. To learn more about the Senate's Internet security and privacy policy online, please go to this address: http://www.senate.gov/security.html.

If You Send Us Personal Information

Our web site is set up not to collect any personal information about you when you visit the site unless you choose to provide that information to us. Our web site has online web forms that you can use to contact us by sending an electronic mail message expressing your views or concerns or asking for assistance with a particular problem involving a federal agency. To send e-mail, the online web form asks you for your name, address, e-mail address, and, if you wish, your home or work telephone numbers. We use this information provided by you to contact you about the matter you expressed your views about and to provide any casework assistance we can regardin problems you may be experiencing in dealing with a government agency. This information will be available to members of our staff so they can help in responding to your message or request.

Our office tabulates comments received through our web site concerning legislation and government policy issues so that we will be fully informed about the views of constituents. From time to time, we come across a comment made by a constituent, or a situation described by a constituent, in an e-mail message (as well as postal mail, phone calls, and faxes) that we feel makes a point of such general interest that we would like to refer to it in a speech, or include it in the Congressional Record, or make some other use of it, either in connection with debate in the Senate or by sharing it with the relevant government agency. Our staff makes every effort in such cases to contact the author first. If you intend your message to be confidential, and would prefer that it not be used in such a way, please feel free to advise us of your preference in the message, so we can be sure to respect your wishes and see that your views are held entirely within our office.

Links to Other Sites

Our web site has links to other useful sites on the Internet, including sites of other government agencies. If you follow any link that takes you to a location that does not include 'senate.gov' in the address, you will have left the Senate web server and you will need to refer to that site's own privacy policy.