Privacy Policy

Our privacy policy is very simple: We collect no personal information about you unless you choose to provide that information to us. Your personal information is used only for its expressed purposes; we will not give, share, sell, rent or transfer your personal information to an outside party.

If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the website, read pages or download information, our website's operating system will automatically record some general, non-personal information about your visit.

If you voluntarily submit personal information via a form on our website (such as our confact form, online publication order forms, e-newsletter sign-up form, or conference and training registration forms), or if you contact us via e-mail, we will use that information only for its expressed purpose.

To know more about how we record non-personal information about your visit, how we use information that you voluntarily submit using forms or e-mail or our use of cookies and links, then continue on. Otherwise, enjoy your visit!

Non-Personal Information We Record

During your visit, our web operating system will record:

  • The internet domain for your internet service, such as "xcompany.com" or "xcompany.net" if you use a private internet access account, or "yourschool.edu" if you connect from a college or university domain and IP address (a number automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the web) from which you access our site.
  • The type and version of browser (such as "Firefox version X" or "Google Chrome version X") that you use and the type of operating system you use (such as Macintosh, Unix or Windows).
  • The date and time you visit our site.
  • The pages you visit on our site.
  • The address of the previous website you were visiting, if you linked to us from another website.

We use this information for statistical analysis to help us make our site more useful to visitors. The system does not record information about individuals and the information is only used for internal management purposes.

Information Collected from Interactive Forms

On some of our webpages, we offer interactive forms that let you voluntarily submit personal information (such as your e-mail address, name, or organization). This occurs when you are registering for various conferences, workshops, or training sessions offered by the Chesapeake Bay Program or its partners, signing up for newsletters, or ordering publications from our publications database. In those cases, all submitted information is used only for the expressed purposes and is not made available to any third party. We do require you to submit a profile if you are downloading data from our data hub. This information is used to determine user profiles of our data users and the types of data they are interested in.

Information From E-mail You Send to Us

If you decide to send us an e-mail, the message will usually contain your return e-mail address. If you include personally-identifying information in your e-mail because you want us to address issues specific to your situation, we may use that information in responding to your request. Sometimes we forward your e-mail to other Bay Program partner agencies who may be better able to help you or answer your question.

We do not distribute lists of e-mail addresses to any parties outside of the Bay Program and its partners.

Cookies

On certain Bay Program webpages, we use cookies to help you use dynamic, interactive features of our website. A cookie is a small file that a website transfers to your computer's hard disk, usually to keep track of you while you are connected to that site.

The cookies on Bay Program webpages do not collect personal information about you, but they collect information about your browser session. The cookie makes it easier for you to use the dynamic features of these webpages without having to provide the same information again as you move from one page to another.

To protect your privacy, be sure to close your browser completely after you have finished conducting business with a website that uses cookies. If you are concerned about the potential use of information gathered from your computer by cookies, you can set your browser to prompt you before it accepts a cookie. Most internet browsers have settings that let you identify and/or reject cookies.

Our website has many links to Bay Program partner sites, as well as other websites we find interesting or relevant outside the Bay Program partnership. These other sites may send their own cookies to users, collect data, or solicit personal information. The privacy policies and procedures described here do not apply to any external sites we reference. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any site you visit from ours, especially if you share any personal information. Except as required by law, we do not share our e-mail with any other outside organizations.

Contact

If you have any questions or comments about the information presented here, please send us comments using our online comments section or contact our Web Administrator.