Privacy

Protecting your privacy is very important to us. Our website links to other NIH sites, federal agency sites and occasionally to private organizations. Once you leave the primary APIS.NIAAA.NIH.gov site, you are subject to the privacy policy for the site(s) you are visiting. We do not collect any personally identifiable information (PII) about you during your visit to the Alcohol Policy Information System (APIS) website. We do, however, collect some data about your visit to our website to help us better understand how the public uses the site and how to make it more helpful. We collect information from visitors who read, browse, and/or download information from our website. APIS never collects information for commercial marketing or any purpose unrelated to the APIS mission and goals.

TYPES OF INFORMATION COLLECTED

When you visit the APIS website (apis.niaaa.nih.gov), the following information is stored:

• Domain from which you access the Internet
• IP address (an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to a computer when surfing the web )
• Operating system and information about the type of browser used when visiting the site
• Date and time of your visit
• Pages you visited
• Address of the website that connected you to the APIS.NIAAA.NIH.gov website (such as google.com or bing.com)

We use this information to measure the number of visitors to our site and its various sections and to help make our site more useful to visitors. Unless it is specifically stated otherwise, no additional information will be collected about you.

COOKIES

When you visit some websites, their web servers generate pieces of information known as cookies. The use of cookies on the APIS website falls into two categories, based on the length of time they remain active:

Session cookies are used for technical purposes, such as enabling better navigation through the site, facilitating the use of user accounts, and generating aggregated statistics about how the website is used. There are two types of session cookies:

1.      Single-session cookies last only as long as a web browser is open.  Once the browser is closed, the data files on your computer are deleted. Information collected from per-session cookies will not be disclosed to third parties.  For these technical purposes, per-session cookies are enabled by default.  Under the framework of OMB M-10-22, this qualifies as a Tier 1 use.

2.      Multi-session cookies last beyond a single session of browsing a website; this allows a website to recognize a computer or user for defined amount of time.

Persistent cookies. We use persistent cookies to enable Google Analytics to differentiate between new and returning apis.niaaa.nih.gov visitors by analyzing the data collected through the session and persistent metrics cookies.  The third-party analytics provider does not receive personally identifiable information through these cookies and does not combine, match, or cross-reference apis.niaaa.nih.gov information with any other information.  Please review the third-party analytics provider’s privacy policy (link is external) for additional information.

The OMB Memo 10-22 Guidance defines our use of persistent cookies as "Usage Tier 2—Multi-session without Personally Identifiable Information (PII).”  The policy says, "This tier encompasses any use of multi-session web measurement and customization technologies when no PII is collected."

APIS generally does not access or store the raw information collected through these cookies. We do view aggregate statistical analyses prepared by our third-party analytics provider, but these analyses do not include any personally identifiable information. We do not sell, rent, exchange, or otherwise disclose this information to persons or organizations outside the NIH.

How to Opt Out or Disable Cookies: If you do not wish to have session or persistent cookies placed on your computer, you can disable them using your web browser. If you opt out of cookies, you will still have access to all information and resources at apis.niaaa.nih.gov. Instructions for disabling or opting out of cookies in the most popular browsers are located at http://www.usa.gov/optout_instructions.shtml. Please note that by following the instructions to opt-out of cookies, you may be disabling cookies from all sources, not just those from https://www.apis.niaaa.nih.gov. You can also delete cookies stored in your browser at any time.

Questions about NIH privacy policies should be sent to the NIAAA Privacy Act Officer through the NIAAA Web Master.