Privacy Statement

General Information

The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is committed to protecting the privacy of our customers. The following information explains how we gather and share information on our website. It also explains the technology we use to ensure that your information remains private and secure. You may also want to refer to our guidelines concerning the release of DMV information in general.

Information Gathering

IP Addresses

If you have access to the Internet your computer automatically has an Internet Protocol (IP) address, a series of distinct numbers that identify your computer. We use customer IP addresses to track the number of customers who visit our site and identify our most popular pages so that we can improve site content and diagnose problems with our server.

Online Transactions

We ask only for the information we need to process your online transaction. For driver-related transactions, we ask for customer number, date of birth and PIN. For vehicle transactions, we ask for title number and the last four digits of your Vehicle Identification Number (VIN).

When you come online to personalize your DMV-assigned PIN, we ask for your email address. This is an optional field and it is not required. In the future, we hope to provide customers with an option to receive their driver's license and vehicle registration renewal notices via email.

Communicating With Us

While visiting our site, you may want to send DMV an email or request that we call you. We will request your name, the subject of your question or comment, and your email address or telephone number. This information is used solely to fulfill your online request. DMV does not share this customer information with other individuals, organizations or with advertisers.

Information Sharing

DMV does not share, sell or trade email addresses, information collected on surveys or any other information about our online customers. If necessary, DMV may disclose user information if we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against an individual who attempts, even unintentionally, to gain unauthorized access to DMV information or to disrupt our web site.

Cookies

When you visit a web site and request information, the site's server sends the request to you and then breaks the connection. The connection does not resume again until you perform another action. To ensure that we maintain a connection between our server and your computer for the duration of an online transaction, we use a standard web technology called "cookies." A cookie is a very small amount of data that is sent from our server to your computer's hard drive. Cookies allow us to save the information that you input while progressing through an online transaction.

If your browser is not configured to "accept" cookies, you will still be able to access the information on our web site, but you will not be able to do online transactions.

Credit Card Information

If you logon with your PIN, we store your credit card information on our site for 24 hours. If your transaction is interrupted for some reason, you can return to our site within 24 hours and avoid entering your credit card information all over again. After you have used your credit card the first time in a given 24 hour period, we will display just the last five digits of the credit card number and give you the option to use the same card again. The credit card information is encrypted and no one has access to it.

Links

For your convenience, our site provides links to other sites. However, DMV is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of the web sites that we link to. Whenever we display a link to another site, you will see a small "exit" symbol to alert you that by clicking the link you will "exit" the DMV site. If you have questions or concerns about a site we link to, please read the privacy and security information for that site.

Security

The DMV site has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of information under our control. When you browse public areas of the DMV web site, none of your personal information is captured or stored by DMV. When you conduct an online transaction with DMV, we offer the use of a secure server.

Firewalls

Our firewalls are a complex system of hardware and software that allow us to strictly regulate information and data that can both enter and exit our servers. This ensures that only authorized access occurs and that DMV information remains confidential. No customer information is stored on our Internet servers. Records are stored in separate databases not directly connected to the Internet.

Secure Sockets Layer

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is an industry standard technology that creates a secure environment for the information transferred between your browser and DMV. SSL encrypts all information that you input before it is sent to DMV. Furthermore, all of the customer data we collect, including credit card information, is protected against unauthorized access. You will enter a secure environment when you begin a transaction. SSL protects your transaction in two ways:

• It verifies that you are communicating with DMV and prevents another computer from impersonating DMV.
• It uses cryptography to create a secure environment for information transferred between your browser and DMV. Secure data such as your customer number, PIN, date of birth, plate number and title number are scrambled in the encryption/cryptography process.