Privacy

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Collecting and using personal information

Welcome to the County of Monterey website. As you navigate and communicate with us using this site, we may ask you to disclose certain personal information so that we can provide you with the highest quality information and services. To allow you to make an informed decision about whether to disclose your personal information, we are advising you how we collect and use personal information. “Personal information,” means data that is unique to an individual, such as a name, address, social security number, e-mail address, or telephone number.

Ordinarily, the County of Monterey website collects information about each visitor to the website in three ways: (1) through your IP address, which does not contain personal information, (2) through email correspondence you send us, and (3) when you submit personally identifiable information to process a request for County services.

We may use personal information for the following purposes:

verifying your identity so that we can be sure that all of our communications with you are secure and confidential;
responding to inquiries or requests from you;
delivering web-based services to you.

We will not collect personal information about you unless you provide us that information voluntarily, and we will use your personal information only for the purpose that you provided it.
In some cases, and in all cases where required by law or regulation, you will be able to update the information that you provide to us either by sending us an e-mail or, where you have established personal profiles with us, by updating your profile online. Please refer to the specific pages where data is collected for more information.

We will not sell or license rights to your personal information to any third-party unless expressly authorized by you.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties if required by law, such as pursuant to a subpoena, regulatory oversight or other legal process;

This website is not directed to and we will not knowingly collect personally-identifiable information from minors under the age of thirteen (13) without their parents’ consent.

In all cases, we will disclose your personally identifiable information consistent with applicable laws and regulations and we will require the recipient to protect the information and use it only for the purpose it was provided.

Collecting and using non-personally identifiable information

When you visit our website, we collect certain non-personally-identifiable and aggregate information about you. This data helps us to analyze and improve the usefulness of the information we provide at this website. To allow you to make an informed decision about whether to use and navigate our website, we advising you how we collect and use non-personally identifiable and aggregate information. By “non-personally-identifiable information, we mean information that does not identify you personally, but provides us with anonymous "usage data," such as the number of unique visitors we receive, what pages are visited most often, and the navigation preferences and characteristics of our visitors.

Web browser information. Web browsers collect and store information about the type of device and operating system you are using to access our website, as well as your device’s MAC address for facilitating network communications. We access this information to help us to establish a secure and consistent connection to you during your visits to our website.
"Cookie" technology. This website uses cookies. A "cookie" is an element of data that a website can send to your browser when you link to that website. It is not a computer program and has no ability to read data residing on your computer or instruct it to perform any step or function. By assigning a unique data element to each visitor, the County website is able to recognize repeat users, track usage patterns and better serve you when you return to our site. The cookie does not extract other personal information about you, such as your name or address.
Client-side page tagging. This website uses client-side page tagging. This technology uses code on each web page to write certain information about the page and the visitor to a log when a page is rendered to you by your web browser. "Tagging" results in a JavaScript program running in your browser, but it is limited to providing information about the page that you are requesting and the configuration of your browser. It will not read any of your data files, nor execute any additional programs. It does not extract any personal information about you, such as your name or email address. You can prevent tagging by disabling JavaScript in your browser when you use the County website, but that may prevent you from using all of our website's functions.
Tracking pixels or beacons. This website uses tracking pixels or beacons. These techniques use electronic files to track your navigation of our website, your completion of transactions and other browsing behavior.

IP Address: When you subscribe to an Internet Service Provider (ISP), your computing device is assigned an IP Address. Your computing device IP address does not contain or reveal personal information about you. Information such as y our name, address, or phone number cannot be obtained through your computing device’s IP address alone. We track and store IP addresses to help us diagnose problems with our servers, administer our website, track website traffic patterns and volume, and identify ways to help make our website more secure. IP addresses are not used to track or monitor individual users.

Behavioral Advertising

Monterey County does not serve advertising on its website. However, we do provide links to sites that may engage online advertising service providers to serve ads on other sites, based on web pages you may have visited or your search engine activity. Currently, the County of Monterey website does not respond to “Do Not Track” signals from browsers.

Your e-mail
We welcome your comments or questions about our website and have provided e-mail boxes for that purpose. We will share your comments and questions with our customer service representatives and those employees most capable of addressing your questions and concerns.

Please note that your e-mail messages to us are not encrypted. Like most, if not all, non-encrypted Internet e-mail communications, your email messages may be accessed and viewed by other Internet users, without your knowledge and permission, while in transit to us. For that reason, to protect your privacy, please do not use e-mail to communicate information to us that you consider confidential. If you wish, you may contact us instead via telephone at the numbers provided at various locations on our sites. We are a government agency subject to Public Records Act requirements. Your email messages are generally considered to be disclosable public records if we retain them in the ordinary course of business. We will keep your email address confidential to the extent permitted by public access laws and other laws.

There are some locations on our website where we have made special provisions for a more secure environment in which we can exchange information with you. At each of these locations, we will provide you with appropriate instructions. Information submitted to the County using our online forms may or may not be private, depending on the form and the nature of the information collected; please see the specific form and the specific County department collecting the form for information.

Linking to other sites
From time to time, our website may provide links to other websites, not owned or controlled by Monterey County, that we think might be useful or of interest to you. We cannot, however, be responsible for the privacy practices used by other website owners or the content or accuracy of those other websites. Links to various non-County of Monterey websites do not constitute or imply endorsement by Monterey County of these websites, any products or services described on these sites, the privacy or security practices of these websites, or of any other material contained in them.

We may also provide links to other websites that are controlled by Monterey County, but that operate independently of the County of Monterey website. Privacy policies applicable to those sites will appear on those sites and may differ from this website Web Privacy Statement.

Security
We have adopted and adhere to stringent security standards designed to protect non-public personal information at the County of Monterey website against accidental or unauthorized access or disclosure. Among the safeguards that Monterey County has developed for this site are administrative, physical and technical barriers that together protect this web site and our other internal systems from unauthorized access or use. We periodically subject our site to simulated intrusion tests and have developed comprehensive disaster recovery plans.

Changes to this statement
Monterey County may change this statement from time to time; when updates are made, the privacy policy version date (located at the bottom of this policy) will also be updated to reflect that a revision occurred. We encourage you to periodically reread this policy to see if there have been any changes that may affect you. This statement is not intended to and does not create any contractual or other legal rights in or on behalf of any party.

If you have questions or concerns about your privacy on our website, contact us at webmaster@co.monterey.ca.us