Privacy

Privacy and Security Notice

1. This World Wide Web (WWW) site is provided as a public service by the Environmental Response Team of the Environmental Protection Agency.

2. Information presented on this WWW site is considered public information and may be distributed or copied. The U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to publish or reproduce these documents, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. These documents may be freely distributed and used for non-commercial, scientific, and educational purposes. Commercial use of the documents available from this server may be protected under U.S. and Foreign Copyright Laws. When individual documents on this server have different copyright conditions, it will be noted in those documents.

3. Links to Web sites outside the U.S. EPA Web site are for the convenience of the user. The Standards of Ethical Conduct do not permit the U.S. EPA to endorse any private sector Web site, product, or service. The U.S. EPA does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at this location. These links are being provided consistent with the intended purpose of this Web site.

4. When you come to this web site to browse, you do so anonymously. By default, EPA does not collect personally identifying information about you. We collect only summary information [see below] about the numbers of individuals who visit our web site and what those individuals look at. This computer system uses industry-standard software to create summary statistics, which are used for assessing what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.

5. Where identifying information is asked of you (such as to respond to an information request) that information is used only for the stated purpose and is not made available for other purposes. See our comments notice of use.

6. For site security and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this computer system employs industry-standard methods to monitor network traffic and identify unauthorized attempts to upload data, change information, or otherwise cause damage. These unauthorized attempts are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.

7. No additional attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits.

8. If you have any questions or comments about the information presented here, please forward them to us through our Comments Email address.

Example of Information Collected for Statistical Purposes
Below is an example of the information collected based on a standard request for a World Wide Web document:

1999-06-08 10:32:39 134.146.8.33 - W3SVC5
GET /www.epaosc.net/Regionmap.asp - 200 22927 5204 80 HTTP/1.0
Mozilla/3.0+(Win95;+I)
SaneID=134.146.8.33-5866278280828;
+ASPSESSIONIDGQGGGRPQ=KFEOCAAALPCEDBMNJGLNMGJL
http://www.epaosc.net/region_list.asp?region=10

1999-06-08 10:32:39
The date and time of the request.

134.146.8.33 (or yyy.zzz.com)
The IP address (or host name) associated with the requestor (you as the visitor). Depending on the requestor's method of network connection, the IP address (or host name) may or may not identify a specific computer. Connections via many Internet Service Providers assign different IP addresses for each session, so the host name identifies only the ISP. The IP address (or host name) will identify a specific computer if that computer has a fixed IP address.

W3SVC5
The site name designated internally by the server for logging purposes. It informs the server that this particular request came through a web site located on this server.

GET /www.epaosc.net/Regionmap.asp
The location of the requested file.

200
The status code. 200 means the request was filled.

22927
The size of the requested file in bytes.

5204
The time required to complete the request in milliseconds.

80 HTTP/1.0
The port and protocol used to complete the request.

Mozilla/3.0
Identifies the type of browser software used to access the page, which indicates what design parameters to use in constructing the pages.

(Win95;+I)
Identifies the operating system used to access the page, which indicates what design parameters to use in constructing the pages.

SaneID=134.146.8.33-5866278280828;
+ASPSESSIONIDGQGGGRPQ=KFEOCAAALPCEDBMNJGLNMGJL
Identifies the cookie being used by the server. This web site uses cookies to more accurately log both visits to the site and pages visitors view while on the web site. The use of cookies enables us to improve our site based on how users navigate the site, as well as the length of their visits.

http://www.epaosc.net/region_list.asp?region=10
Identifies the page which the user came from before visiting this page.

Requests for other types of documents use similar information. No other user-identifying information is collected.