privacy and security policy

Thank you for visiting college.gov. Our privacy policy is simple: We collect no personal information about you unless you choose to provide that information to us.

If you want to know more about how we record nonpersonal information about your visit or how we use information that you voluntarily submit, please read on.

Nonpersonal Information We Record

If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the Web site, read pages, or download information, our Web site's operating system will automatically record some general information about your visit.

During your visit, our Web operating system will record:

• The Internet domain for your Internet service such as "xcompany.com" or "xcompany.net", if you use a private Internet access account, or "yourschool.edu" if you connect from a college or university domain.
• The type of browser (such as "Netscape version x" or "Internet Explorer version x") that you are using.
• The type of operating system that you use (such as Mac, UNIX, or Windows).
• The date and time you visit our site, and the Web pages that you visit on our site.
• The address of the previous Web site you were visiting, if you linked to us from another Web site.

We use this information for statistical analysis, to help us make our site more useful to visitors. This tracking system does not record information about individuals.

Interactive Tools

college.gov features several interactive tools, including a customizable college roadmap poster tool. Using it, you can personalize a college roadmap poster with information such as your dream school and a personal message. However, this information is not stored and will be deleted when you exit the page containing the tool.

Survey

The college.gov survey helps us determine the effectiveness of college.gov and identify potential areas for improvement. It does not request personally identifiable information. It should take you approximately 5 minutes to complete the survey form. Completing the form is entirely voluntary. Our authority to collect the information is under OMB control number 1845-0045.

Security and Intrusion Detection

For security purposes and to make sure this service remains available to all users, we use special software programs for monitoring network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise to cause damage to this government computer system. These programs collect no personally identifiable information, but they do collect information that could help us identify someone attempting to tamper with this Web site.

If you use this system, you should understand that all activities may be monitored and recorded. Anyone using this system expressly consents to such monitoring. WARNING: If such monitoring reveals possible evidence of criminal activity, monitoring records may be provided to law enforcement officials. Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, we make no other attempts to identify individual users or their usage habits. We only use raw monitoring data logs for determining trends in usage patterns and in diagnosing system problems.

Information from e-mail You Send to Us

If you decide to send us an e-mail, the message will usually contain your return e-mail address. If you include personally identifiable information in your e-mail because you want us to help you with a specific problem, we may use that information in responding to your request. Of course, you do not need to send us any personally identifiable information in your e-mail. Also, e-mail is not necessarily secure against interception. Please send only information necessary to help us process your request.