Privacy Introduction
The
privacy of our General Services Administration / Federal
Acquisition Service (FAS) customers and affiliates has always been
of utmost importance to FAS. Per our own policy for personal
privacy, FAS will collect no personal information about you
during your visit to our site unless you choose to provide
that information via web-based forms or built in e-mail
interfaces.
Although the following discussion may seem
exhaustive, FAS wants to ensure that you, our customer, fully
understand our policy with respect to your privacy. Our goal
is to answer all questions concerning your privacy below.
Information Automatically Collected
During your visit to the FAS web sites, certain
information is automatically collected that never identifies
the individual but does provide system information, so that we
can best manage the performance of our web environment.
The only information that is automatically collected
during your visit is as follows:
- The name of the domain from which you access the
Internet (i.e., erols.com, if you are connecting from an
Erols account, or harvard.edu if you are connecting from
Harvard University's domain)
- The date and time you access our site
- The Internet address of the web site from which you
linked directly to our site
- The type of browser you are using to visit the site
This information enables the FAS web environment to
present its data using the best possible method. For example,
a web site may look different when viewed by Microsoft's
Internet Explorer versus Netscape's browser. Thus, our site
determines which type of browser you have and presents the web
page according to the best practice for that specific browser.
Date and Time information and the domain you visited
us from provide performance statistics so that our engineers
can better tailor the system based on geographical location
and time of day visits.
Tracking links let us know how
the customer found our site and the information provided by
our site. This gives our web engineers insight on how they can
better manage navigation and ensure that our customers find
the information they are looking for.
How Does
FAS Use Cookies ?
A privacy statement cannot be
complete without discussing the use of Internet cookies. A
cookie is a small piece of information that is sent to your
browser -- along with a Web page -- when you access a Web
site. Your browser will only return this cookie
information to the domain where the cookie originated (in this
case, gsa.gov). No other site can request it. A
"persistent" cookie is a cookie that has been assigned an
expiration value. When the expiration value is exhausted, the
cookie is automatically removed. The term "persistent" means
that the cookie exists in your browser even after you have
shut down the session with the web site. Many sites use
persistent cookies to track your progress through the system
and retain information with respect to where you have visited
on the site. "Non-persistent" cookies only manage the session
while your browser is open. Once the browser is closed, the
cookie disappears from your system. FAS web sites do not
use persistent cookies.
Privacy and Correspondence Via E-mail
When you send us personally identifying information
(i.e., by sending an electronic mail message containing a
question or comment, or by filling out a site-form that
e-mails us this information), we use this information to
respond to your requests. We may forward your e-mail to
other Government employees who are better able to answer your
questions.
We want to make it clear that we will not
obtain personally identifying information about you when you
visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information
to us.
Personal
Information Voluntarily Provided: The System of Records
In a system of records, where traditional paper
collections of information are used to supplement web based
electronic forms, the personal record, in its entirety,
whether electronic, paper or both, is covered by the Privacy
Act and will be treated as such.
As discussed above,
information that a customer provides to us -- through our web
site, mail, or some other method of transfer -- is held in
confidence with FAS and is used only for the purposes of the
business transaction it was intended for. Except for
authorized law enforcement investigations and Freedom of
Information Act requests, we do not share any information we
receive with any outside parties.
Security,
Intrusion and Detection
This is a Federal
Government web site. For site security puposes and to ensure
that this service remains available to all users, this web
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 puposes and are scheduled
for regular destruction in accordance with National Archives
and Records Administrative Guidelines.
SSL Encryption
Those who have
Internet access and plan to purchase products or services
using their Government Purchase Card can be assured security
is of the highest consideration with GSA. For this reason, GSA
Advantage utilizes the industry standard Secure Sockets Layer
(SSL) technology. SSL encrypts the transfer of information
between your browser and our server. For your protection, you
should be using a web browser that supports SSL encryption
(such as Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4.0 or greater,
or Netscape Navigator version 4.0 or greater).
WARNING
GSA Advantage is an ebusiness
site designed to facilitate on-line purchasing and GSA
Schedules contract research by Federal employees and State and Local government entities. GSA
Advantage is not designed to support FTP or other methods of
bulk access to its data repositories. Use of automated data
gathering tools or other programs that attempt to gather
information from GSA Advantage data sources is prohibited;
when detected, the user will be blocked from access to GSA
Advantage.
Unauthorized attempts to upload 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.
General Services Administration / Federal Acquisition Services will
enforce the law to the greatest extent against any individual
who tampers with the information available on this site.
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