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Privacy and Security


The Office of Government Ethics is committed to protecting your privacy.  The U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) will collect no personal information when you visit our website unless you choose to provide that information. If you do choose to provide personal information to us, it is only used to fulfill your request for information.  We do collect some technical information on the OGE website. There is an explanation below on how we collect and handle this technical information.

If You Send Us Personal Information
If you choose to provide us with personal information, such as by sending an email or by filling out and submitting a form through our website, we will use that information to respond to your message or to fulfill the stated purpose of the communication. Remember that email is not necessarily secure against interception. If your communication is sensitive or includes personal information you may prefer to send it by postal mail instead.

We may share the information you give us with another government agency 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. Before you submit personal information, such as on an online form, you may be given more specific guidance as to how your personal information may be used.

OGE never collects information or creates individual profiles for marketing purposes.

While you must provide an email address for a response to any incoming questions or comments to OGE.gov, we recommend that you not include any other personal information, especially Social Security numbers. Electronically submitted information is maintained and destroyed in compliance with the Federal Records Act, as implemented under the regulations the National Archives and Records Administration  This information may also be covered by the Privacy Act and subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Technical Information Collected and Stored Automatically
If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the website, read pages, or download information, we will gather and store certain information about your visit automatically. This information does not identify you personally. We automatically collect and store some or all of the following information about your visit: the Internet IP address from which you accessed our website, the date and time, the Internet IP address of the website from which you linked to our website, the name of the file or words you searched for, items clicked on a page, and the browser and operating system used.

We use this information to help us make our website more useful to visitors and to learn about the number of visitors to our site and the types of technology our visitors use. We do not track or record information about individuals and their visits.

Cookies
When you visit some websites, their web servers generate pieces of information known as cookies. These cookies can be used either for the duration of a single Web session (session cookies) or they can be used to permanently store data on your computer’s hard drive enabling recognition of your computer in the future (persistent cookies.)

The OGE website uses single-session cookies to serve technical purposes, like providing seamless navigation through OGE.gov website. These cookies do not permanently record data and they are not stored on your computer's hard drive. OGE.gov’s session cookies are only available during an active browser session. When you close your browser, the session cookie disappears.

OGE.gov uses multi-session cookies to help us understand how people use the site and to give us information on how we can make the site. We use Google Analytics web analytics software, and while we do not collect any personally-identifiable information (PII), Google Analytics uses IP addresses to track what sites and search queries refer visitors to OGE.gov. Traffic statistics are collected anonymously and aggregated, and no information is traceable to any specific individual.

Cookies—Tier 1 (single session) and Tier 2 (multi-session without PII), are used on OGE.gov in compliance with OMB Memorandum 10-22, Guidance for Online Use of Web Measurement and Customization (PDF)  dated June 25, 2010. OGE.gov does not use Tier 2 (multi-session without PII) or Tier 3 (multi-session with PII) cookies. 

You can remove or block the use of web measurement and customization technologies by changing the setting of your browser to block cookies as described on USA.gov’s Web Measurement and Customization Opt-out page.