TRAC - Privacy Policy

Your privacy is important to us at TRAC Reports, Inc. To better protect your privacy, we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to find, we make it available from our homepages and at every point where personally identifiable information may be requested.

TRAC Reports, Inc. is the sole owner of the information collected on the TRAC (http://tracreports.org) and TRACFED (http://tracreports.org/tracfed) websites. For site management and statistical purposes, we collect and use several kinds of information about you at different places on our websites.

In order to use some of the services provided on our websites, you must first complete a registration form. During registration, you are required to give contact information (such as name, organization, and email address). We use this information to send you email about services on our site for which you have expressed interest. You may optionally choose to provide additional descriptive information (such as city, state and zip code). Some services require unique identifiers (such as username and password) to allow you to access to the service and to maintain individual search results.

For online purchase of data services, our order form requires contact information (such as name, email, and shipping address) for billing purposes and filling your orders. If we have trouble processing your order, we may use this information to contact you. We do not collect financial information (such as credit card number and expiration date) because we use a third party service for handling online purchases.

For site management and statistical purposes, we collect information through standard webserver logs. These logs contain the domain name or IP address (the number that identifies your computer on the internet) from which you connect to our site, the date and time you access the site, the pages visited or file requested, search terms you may have used, the previous page from which you connected, and identification and version of your browser and operating system. If you permit it, the webserver logs also store a persistent "cookie" (see below).

A "cookie" is information stored on your computer by a Web server and used to customize your web service in some way. We use two different kind of cookies, session and persistent.

Session cookies: Session cookies are stored on your computer, and expire when you exit your browser application or turn off your computer. We use session cookies with our subscription service. If your browser is configured to accept cookies, we set a session cookie with your username and password anytime you are asked to authenticate. This keeps you from having to log in with a username and password more than once.

You can choose not to accept these cookies and still use our subscription services. If your browser is configured to reject cookies, the only drawback you will notice is that you will have to submit a username and password each time you submit a search request to the website. Refer to the help information in your browser software for instructions on how to disable cookies.

Persistent cookies: Persistent cookies are stored both on your computer and in our webserver logs. They remain on your computer for a specified period of time or until you use your browser to delete them. Many websites use such cookies to identify repeat visitors. Our websites use a cookie whose value consists of your computer's IP address plus a string of digits. This cookie allows us to "remember" you on subsequent visits and to perform statistical analyses of how our websites are used.

You can choose not to accept this cookie and still use our websites with no drawback to you. Refer to the help information in your browser software for instructions on how to disable cookies.

Not all the information listed above is collected all the time. What information we collect depends on how you use our websites.

No personally-identifying information is required for the use of public (nonsubscription) areas of our websites. Should you choose to be notified via email of website updates, or should you request pre-release access to areas of our public sites while they are under embargo, then we will collect and store your name, organization and email address for this use. You will also be asked to provide a username and password which allow you to change your identifying information. If you do not wish to receive such updates or access, you are not required to provide any of this information. You may also change your email notification status at any time; please see the Choice / opt-out section below.

If you are an individual subscriber to our data services, you are asked to provide name, organization and email address, as well as a username and password which we will use to allow access to these services. Your email address will be used to contact you if you choose to be notified via email of website updates. You have the option to not receive such emails at the time you register, and may change your email notification status at any time; please see the Choice / opt-out section below.

When you access our subscription services under a site license, your computer's IP address may be used instead of a username and password in order to identify you as a valid user. In addition, if you use the Analyzer and Web Locker services, you are required to provide a different, individual username and password. No additional information is required for use of the Express and Going Deeper services.

As with individual subscribers, you may elect to be notified of updates. You have the option to not receive such emails, and may change your email notification status at any time; please see the Choice / opt-out section below. If your browser is configured to accept cookies, we set session cookies for username and password to keep your from having to authenticate more than once per session.

We use your information to make our websites easier for you to use, to help us monitor and improve them, and to contact you.

We use your contact information to notify you of site updates. Site updates include letting you know when additional websites become available, when major new areas are added or updated, and additional data services come online.

We user your username and password to provide pre-release access to areas of our public sites while they are under embargo, and to authenticate you as a user of our subscription services.

As with most standard websites, we use the information from our webserver logs in order to monitor the health and status of our websites and to suggest improvements. Specifically, we may check of the types of browsers/operating systems used and the pages from which you link to our site. We may create summary statistics from the logs in order to measure the number of visitors to the various sections of our site and to help make the site more useful. We may also calculate the number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track movement through the sites, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.

Some of the agencies which provide funding to TRAC require us to provide them such summary statistics; however, we do not provide any individually identifying data to these or any other third parties.

Update notifications. When you subscribe to our data services, we will send you a welcoming email to verify your password and username. You will occasionally receive information when additional TRAC websites become available, major new areas are added/updated, and additional data services come online. You have no need to register to be able to access the public areas of our site but may choose to receive these updates. Out of respect for your privacy, you always have the option to not receive these types of communications. Please see the Choice / opt-out section.

Service announcements. On rare occasions we have to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we may send you an email. Generally, you may not opt-out of these communications, though you may choose to deactivate your account. These communications are never promotional in nature.

This website takes every precaution to protect your information. When you submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line.

We use third party services to handle payments, so our own systems will never see your credit card or other financial information. When you enter sensitive information such as credit card number into our payment provider's online order form, that information is encrypted and is protected using SSL encryption technology. While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on Web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer becomes locked (as opposed to un-locked, or open, when you are just browsing).

We also do everything in our power to protect your sensitive information off-line. All of the information we collect, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. All employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Finally, the servers that store personally identifiable information are in a secure environment, in a locked facility.

If you request, we will provide you with a report of the unique identifier information (e.g., user id or password) and contact information (e.g., name, email or postal address, organization, phone number) that we maintain about you.

We do not aggregate or store information collected through cookies, log files, clear gifs, and/or third parties to create a profile of our users. (A profile is stored information, which some organizations keep on individual users that details their viewing preferences.)

Our websites contain links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage you to be aware of when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by our websites.

You always have the opportunity to 'opt-out' of having your information used for purposes not directly related to the way you use our site. This opt-out mechanism is at the same point where we ask for your information. For example, our online subscription form has an 'opt-out' mechanism so you can choose not to receive email updates. You may also opt-out of receiving these communications by contacting us via phone, fax, email or postal mail. See Contacting us below. You may also choose to disable cookies and still use all of our services. See our section on cookies above.

We do not share information with any other organization. We may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our website.

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement and provide a notification on our What's New page. We want you to be aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.

If, however, we are going to use your personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will first notify you via email. You will have a choice as to whether or not we use your information in this different manner. However, if you have opted out of all communication with the site, or deleted/deactivated your account, then you will not be contacted, but neither will your personal information be used in this new manner. In addition, if we make any material changes in our privacy practices that do not affect information already stored in our database, we will post a prominent notice on our website notifying all users of the change. In some cases where we post a notice we will also, if you have opted to receive communications from us, send you an email notifying you of the changes in our privacy practices.