We are committed to protecting the privacy rights of the public and
Financial Management Service (FMS) Web Application User Community. The
se
rights are ensured through the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. ? 552A ),
Office of Management and Budget guidance, and other Federal regulations
and FMS policy.
Information
Automatically Gathered
For Web site security purposes as well as to improve our sites, the
Financial Management Service (FMS) Web Applications use software that
can
monitor network traffic and identify unauthorized attempts to cause damage
or upload or change information. Like all Web sites, when a page is
requested FMS Web Applications can obtain some information about the
request, such as: name of the domain from which the visitor accesses the
Internet (e.g. "a company.com"; "a school.edu; or "an
agency.gov"), Internet protocol address, date and time the Web site
is visited and type of browser and operating system used to access the
site. Aggregate information about individual Web pages visited also is
collected.
We generally do not use this automatically gathered information to attempt
to identify individual users. We may use this information for authorized
law enforcement investigations related to FMS Web Applications. This
includes attempting to trace the source of an attack designed to disrupt
or bring down the site or to prove whether a financial transaction has
taken place. Otherwise, we only use this information to improve the
content and structure of the FMS Web Applications’ Web sites.
FMS Web Applications require and use a temporary cookie for maintaining a
connection. This session cookie contains a system generated ID only, is
stored in memory and automatically removed no later than upon the closing
of a Web browser. Persistent
(written to your hard-drive) cookies are also used to maintain optional
preferences. These cookies only contain such preference settings; they do
not contain uniquely identifying information and are not used for tracking
purposes.
Caution
About Sending Unencrypted Personal Information Over the Internet
If you choose to send the Financial Management Service (FMS) Web Applications
personal information electronically or request that we send you personal
information electronically (such as by e-mail), we cannot guarantee its
confidentiality as it travels across the Internet. While not likely,
others could eavesdrop. To make this less likely, we may use encryption to
protect information that you send or view via Web pages (this does not
apply to e-mail). FMS Web Applications utilize a secure transmission
protocol (Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)) to provide protection of the Web
page
communications across the Internet between the FMS Web Application and
your computer. SSL is a commonly used protocol for managing the security
of an interactive Web session on the Internet. If the Web page has an
address that begins with <https://> rather than <http://> then
the page is protected by SSL.
Disclosure of Usage
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 at three month intervals.
Terms of Use
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. This is an Official United States Government System, which
may be used only for authorized purposes. Unauthorized modification of
any
information stored on this system may result in criminal prosecution. The
government may monitor and audit the usage of this system, and all persons
are hereby notified that the use of this system constitutes consent to
such and auditing.