Privacy Policy
Our privacy policy is clear: Unless you choose to provide additional information to us, we will collect no personal information about you other than statistical information that can be used to make the site more effective for all our visitors.
Information We Gather
The only information that is automatically collected and stored is:
- the name of the domain from which you access the Internet (i.e., DHS.gov if you are connecting from a DHS account, or GMU.edu if you are connecting from George Mason University’s domain);
- the date and time of your visit;
- the pages you visit on www.smartamerica.org;
- the Internet address of the website you came from if it linked you directly to smartamerica.org; and
- search terms that you enter into the smartamerica.org search tool.
If your browser accepts cookies, we may use a session cookie to lean how many different visitors come to www.smartamerica.org. We use this information for statistical purposes and to help us make our site more useful to you.
Cookies and SmartAmerica.org
What is a Cookie? Whenever you visit a website the website sends a small piece of information called a cookie along with the webpage. The main purpose of a cookie is to identify and customize webpages for you.
There are two kinds of cookies. A session cookie is a line of text that is stored temporarily in your computer’s random access memory (RAM). A session cookie is never written to a drive, and it is destroyed as soon as you close your browser. A persistent cookie from a website is saved to a file on your hard drive and is called up the next time you visit that website. This lets the website remember what you were interested in the last time you visited.
Use of Cookies on smartamerica.org: The smartamerica.org site creates only a session cookie when you visit and destroys it as soon as you close your browser. There are no persistent cookies created on smartamerica.org. If you have any questions about these policies, please contact us.
Information You Send Us
When you send us personal information (e.g., in an electronic mail message containing a question or comment) or by filling out a form that email us this information, we only use this information to respond to your request. Such application information is carefully protected by the agency and not available in or retained by web tracking software. We may forward your email to the government employee who can best answer your questions. We do not disclose, give, sell, or transfer any personal information about our visitors, unless required for law enforcement or statute.
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 that information to us. Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, or as otherwise required by law, we do not share any information we receive with anyone else.
Security
For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, our hosting webservers use industry-standard methods to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on these servers are strictly prohibited and may be punishable by law, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.
Links to other sites
The pages on www.smartamerica.org may include hypertext links or pointers to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations.