We hold your privacy in the highest regard. MyUSA collects some anonymous information automatically to help us improve the service (such as what components are being used when), and offers the opportunity for you to provide us with basic personal information (such as your name or address) to help customize your experience and simplify many common tasks. MyUSA has a few fundamental principles:
- Your personal information should only be used to improve or customize your experience.
- The information you provide is your information and you should have the ultimate say in how it's used.
- We'll always ask before we share your information with an agency or other government entity, and unless you say otherwise, will remain private to you (except where required by law).
- We never store personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of one of our services.
We are committed to protecting the privacy of our users. We collect no personal information about you when you use our service unless you choose to provide that information to us.
Like most website operators, as you use our service, either directly or indirectly, we may collect and store the following non-personally-identifiable (a.k.a. anonymous) information about your visit:
- the date and time you access the Service;
- the various components of the Service you access;
- if you access the Service from another website or application the identity of that third-party;
- the technical capabilities of the computer you use to access our site;
- the internet service provider you use to connect to the Service (for example "companyX.com" if you have a commercial internet account, or "universityX.edu" if you connect from a university); and
- the IP address (an anonymous number automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the internet) from which you access the Service.
We use this information, in the aggregate, to make the Service more useful to users — to learn about the number of and type of users of the Service, the components utilized, the types of technology used, to detect operational problems, and to improve the website's overall security.
Certain users of our service choose to interact with it in ways that require us to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that we gather depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, if you add your name and street address to your MyUSA profile, we may offer to pre-fill common fields as you complete a form. In each case, we collect such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the user's interaction with us. We do not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And users can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.
When using our Service, you may be prompted with the opportunity to create a MyUSA account, or use an existing, third-party service to identify yourself (such as Google or PayPal). If you chose to do so, MyUSA will have access to the e-mail address you provide directly to MyUSA, or indirectly via the third-party service. Unless you explicitly state otherwise, this pseudo-anonymous information will remain private to your account, and will only be used for notification and to simplify the process of retrieving your account on subsequent uses of the MyUSA Service.
The Service offers the opportunity to store personally identifiable information (such as your name or city). We want you to feel comfortable trusting MyUSA with this basic profile information. Storing such information allows the Service to better customize many common tasks, such as pre-filling common fields across multiple forms. This information will remain private to your account, and will only be shared with government agencies if you explicitly grant permission on a case-by-case basis.
You take your privacy seriously, and so do we. At no time will your profile or login information (the information you provide voluntarily) be used without your explicit permission (except where required by law) or combined with the automatically collected, anonymous information, or otherwise used to identify or track your individual use of the Service.
The information we collect is used to improve our service such as providing you with a more customized or simpler experience. We make every effort to disclose clearly how information is used at the point where it is collected so that you can determine for yourself whether you wish to provide the information.
We may share the information you give us with other government agencies if your inquiry relates to that agency. In other limited circumstances, such as responses to requests from Congress and private individuals, we may be required by law to disclose information you submit. Information is shared within the agency solely on a need-to-know basis.
We destroy the information we collect when the purpose for which it was provided has been fulfilled, unless we are required to keep it longer by statute or official policy. Electronically submitted information is maintained and destroyed according to the principles of the Federal Records Act and the regulations and records schedules approved by the National Archives and Records Administration. In some cases information submitted to us may become an agency record and therefore might be subject to a Freedom of Information Act request.
For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, we employ software to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.
If such monitoring reveals evidence of possible abuse or criminal activity, such evidence may be provided to appropriate law enforcement officials. Unauthorized attempts to upload or change information on this server are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act or other law.
A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. In order to provide a more streamlined experience and to track aggregate usage information, by default, we store small amounts of data on your computer known as type I and type II cookies. We uses cookies to help identify and track visitors, their usage of our services, and their website access preferences. If you wish to opt-out of this feature, you may do so by following these instructions, although due to technical limitations, you may lose the ability to access certain information or services. If you wish to learn more about cookies, please see this informative video.
This website and its associated services is not intended to be accessed by children under the age of 18.
If any personal information you provide will be maintained in a Privacy Act system of records, you will be notified at the point of collection, as to whether providing information is mandatory or voluntary, and the effects of not providing all or any part of the requested information. Clicking a form "submit" button will constitute consent in this regard. Visit our Privacy Act Web Page for additional information
Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Privacy Act of 1974, to the extent applicable, you have certain rights to obtain information about you that may be in our records. For more information about the circumstances under which you can get and correct this information, visit our FOIA Web Page.
To better engage the public in ongoing dialog, we use several third-party platforms including bit.ly, Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, GitHub, and UserVoice. When interacting with our presence on those websites, you may reveal certain personal information to us or to third parties. Except when used for the purpose of responding to a specific message or request, we will neither use nor share nor retain such data.
This website employs Google Analytics (a service from Google, Inc.) and to collect aggregate usage information. In utilizing this analytics service, we maintain our existing standards in regards to the sharing and disclosure of information, security and privacy safeguards for the data, and the data retention policy, each described above.
We reserve the right to modify this policy at any time.
Parts of this privacy policy are inspired by the Automattic Privacy Policy and as a result are made available under the terms of the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 License.