Privacy Policy

1. This website is provided as a public service by the USDA Forest Service.

2. Information presented on this website is considered public information and may be distributed or copied unless otherwise indicated. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credit is requested.

3. For site management, information is collected for statistical purposes. This government computer system uses software programs to create summary statistics, which are used for such purposes as assessing what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.

4. For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this government computer system employs software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

5. Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, no other attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Raw data logs are used for no other purposes than those stated in this notice.

6. Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1987 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.

7. If you have any questions or comments about the information presented here, please forward them to us using the Comment Form.

8. To protect your privacy, this site does not use persistent "cookies."

Example: Information Collected from the USDA Forest Service Website for Statistical Purposes

Below is an example of the information collected based on a standard request for a World Wide Web document:

xxx.yyy.com - - [28/Jan/1997:00:00:01 -0500] "GET /news/nr012797.html HTTP/1.0" 200 16704 Mozilla 3.0/www.altavista.digital.com

xxx.yyy.com (or 123.123.23.12)-- this is the host name (or IP address) associated with the requester (you as the visitor). In this case, (.com) the requester is coming from a commercial address. Depending on the requester's method of network connection, the host name (or IP address) may or may not identify a specific computer. Connections via many Internet Service Providers assign different IP addresses for each session, so the host name identifies only the ISP. The host name (or IP address) will identify a specific computer if that computer has a fixed IP address.

[28/Jan/1997:00:00:01 -0500] -- this is the date and time of the request

"GET /news/nr012797.html HTTP/1.0" -- this is the location of the requested file on the web server 200 -- this is the status code - 200 is OK - the request was filled

16704 -- this is the size of the requested file in bytes

Mozilla 3.0 -- this identifies the type of browser software used to access the page, which indicates what design parameters to use in constructing the pages

www.altavista.digital.com - this indicates the last site the person visited, which indicates how people find our site

Requests for other types of documents use similar information. No personally-identifying information is collected.