Privacy Policy

General Information

This Web site is provided as a public service by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health. NIAID does not disclose, give, sell, or transfer any personal information about visitors to http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/ unless required to do so by law.
Information presented on this Web site is considered public information and may be distributed or copied with some exceptions. For more information on image and text reuse, see Copyright and Reuse of Graphics and Text.

Site Management

NIAID automatically collects a limited amount of information about the use of its Web site, primarily for statistical purposes (that is, to measure the numbers of visitors to various sections of the site). This information may also be helpful when considering changes to the web site to make the site more useful to visitors. Except where it may be required for authorized law enforcement investigations, no other attempts will be made to identify individual users or their usage habits.

Information Collected and Stored Automatically

The following information about users of the NIAID Web site is collected and stored automatically:

• The Internet domain from which a user has accessed the Internet. For example, if a user connects to the Internet through America Online, the domain is aol.com.
• The Internet protocol (IP) address of the computer that was used to access the Internet. An IP address is a number that is assigned to a user's computer when he/she logs onto the Internet. When a Web page is requested, the user's IP address is included in the message, and the recipient of the request can respond to it by sending another message using that IP address.
• The name and version of the user's computer operating system and Internet browser. For example, Windows 2000 (operating system) and Internet Explorer 6.0 or Netscape Navigator 7.1 (Internet browsers).
• If a user comes to www.niaid.nih.gov from another Web site, the Internet address of the "referring" Web site.
• The date, time, and duration of the user's visit to www.niaid.nih.gov, and the pages visited.

Cookies

When a user visits a Web site, the Web site's server generates a piece of information known as a "cookie" and places it on the user's computer. Some cookies remain on a user's computer after the user has ended his/her Web site visit. These types of cookies are called "persistent" cookies. They collect personal information about a user and allow the user's computer to be recognized in the future. Nonpersistent cookies, or "session cookies," are erased by a user's computer after a period of inactivity or when the user closes his/her Internet browser. Session cookies do not collect any personal information about a user. They serve technical purposes, such as allowing seamless navigation through a Web site. Session cookies are stored in memory and are only available during an active browser session.

Federal government Web sites are generally prohibited from using persistent cookies. The only exception to this policy is in the case of customer satisfaction surveys conducted to improve Web site quality. The NIAID Web site is currently running the American Customer Satisfaction Index survey, which employs persistent cookies. These cookies will reside on a user's computer for 30 days to block the appearance of the survey to individuals who responded to it previously. Participation in the American Customer Satisfaction Index survey is completely voluntary, and failure to respond will not affect a visitor's ability to access information on www.niaid.nih.gov.

More Information About Persistent Cookies and the American Customer Satisfaction Index Survey

E-mail Messages Sent to the NIAID Web Site

When inquiries are sent to the NIAID Web site by e-mail, the question(s) and the e-mail address of the sender are stored electronically to allow time for a response to be researched, written, and sent.

Links to Other Web Sites from the NIAID Web Site

The NIAID Web site has links to many other Web sites. NIAID cannot guarantee the privacy or security of information users provide to linked, external Web sites.

Voluntarily Submitted Information