Policies

Policies

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Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting the Official Vermont Portal and reviewing our privacy policy. The information we receive depends on what you do when you visit our site. The essence of our privacy policy is simple and clear: we will collect no personal information about you when you visit our Web site unless you voluntarily choose to provide that information to us, for example, by entering information in a voluntary online form, sending us an email, registering for a premium subscription, or by performing a premium service transaction using an assigned user ID and password. More information is as follows:

Overview

Here is how we handle information about your visit to our Portal:

If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the Portal, read pages, or download information, we will gather and store certain information about your visit automatically. Your Web browser software transmits most of this information to us. This information does not identify you personally.

We automatically collect and store only the following information about your visit:

  • The numeric IP address (an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web) from which you access the Vermont.gov Portal. Our software can then map these IP addresses into Internet domain names, for example, "xcompany.com" if you use a private Internet access account, or "yourschool.edu" if you connect from a university's domain.
  • The type of browser and operating system used to access Vermont.gov Portal.
  • The date and time you access Vermont.gov.
  • The pages you visit, including graphics loaded from each page and other documents you download, such as PDF (Portable Document Format) files and word processing documents.
  • If you linked to Vermont.gov from another Web site, the address of that Web site. Your Web browser software transmits this information to us.

We use this information to help us make our site more useful to visitors -- 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.

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Cookies

A cookie is a small text file that a Web site can place on your computer's hard drive in order, for example, to collect information about your activities on the site or to make it possible for you to use an online shopping cart to keep track of items you wish to purchase. The cookie transmits this information back to the Web site's computer which, generally speaking, is the only computer that can read it. Most consumers do not know that cookies are being placed on their computers when they visit Web sites. If you want to know when this happens, or to prevent it from happening, you can set your browser to warn you when a Web site attempts to place a cookie on your computer.

We discourage the use of Web cookies on our Portals. Temporary cookies, however, may be used when necessary to complete a transaction or enhance the user experience of using the site. Certain services, such as Secretary of State services, use cookies to enhance the user experience and/or avoid multiple login/password authentication. If a persistent Web cookie is required, the Web page discloses to visitors that a persistent cookie is being used and/or contains a compact privacy policy used by browsers to determine the need and content of the cookie.

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Email and Online Forms

If you choose to identify yourself by sending us an email or by using our online forms - as when you fill in an online registration for premium services; send an e-mail to site administrator, the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, or someone else; or by filling out some other form with your personal information and submitting it to us through our Portal - we use that information to respond to your message and to help us get you the information you have requested. We treat e-mails the same way we treat letters sent to Vermont.gov.

  • We only share the information you give us with another government agency if your inquiry relates to that agency, or as otherwise required by law.
  • If you choose to subscribe to a feature such as online reminders, newsletter or new services and updates on the site. You may unsubscribe at any time.
  • Registered users can edit or delete their account information by e-mailing, phoning, or faxing Vermont.gov. Please understand that, although we can delete your account online, state records retention laws may require us to maintain information about your account for a period of years.
  • Vermont.gov does not collect information for commercial marketing. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to anyone.

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Personal Information

In addition to email, Vermont.gov and the various state agencies it serves may ask for your personal information in order to process various applications available through Vermont.gov. Examples include:

  • Requests for site feedback, surveys, and contests.
  • When paying by credit card (to verify the card we ask for the cardholder's name and address in addition to account number and card expiration date).
  • When performing a transaction using a premium service; we will log the user's login name for billing purposes or for other purposes required by law.
  • In addition, as Vermont.gov grows, it may offer services such as a business or consumer portals or customization features, and will likely ask for your e-mail and other information.

All of these activities are purely voluntary. You will always have the option of whether to perform the transaction and provide this information. Please understand, however, that in order to open a premium service account or perform a service transaction, you will be required to provide some personal information. Whether to perform the transaction is up to you.

Vermont.gov will send personally identifiable information about you to other companies, agencies, or people when:

  • We have your consent to share the information;
  • We need to share your information to provide the product or service you have requested. For example, we use a third party billing company, and we send information for billing purposes only;
  • We need to send the information to companies who work on behalf of Vermont.gov to provide a product or service to you. (Unless we tell you differently, these companies do not have any right to use the personally identifiable information we provide to them beyond what is necessary to assist us);
  • We are required to do so by law, subpoena, court order or legal process; or
  • We find that your actions on our Portals violate the Vermont.gov Terms of Service or any of our usage guidelines for specific products or services.

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Online Transactions with Governmental Agencies

When you provide personally identifiable information to state agencies through Vermont.gov in order to receive requested specialized services, such information is handled as it would be on an in-person visit to a government office, and subject to the laws, regulations, practices, and procedures of the respective agency.

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Personally Identifiable Information Available From Governmental Agencies Over the Web

Some governmental agencies may already have, or may acquire, personally identifiable information through the normal functions of government. Vermont law governs the use of this information according to Public Records Acts. If state or federal law treats information as public and not confidential, a state agency may choose to make the record available through Vermont.gov in much the same manner as the agency would make a record available to a member of the public who visits the agency in person.

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Links to Other Sites

The Vermont.gov Portal contains links to many state agencies and other public sector resources. In a few cases, we link to private organizations (such as Mapquest and Yahoo!), with their permission. Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy policy of the new site.

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Security

We take very seriously the integrity of the information and systems that we maintain. As such, we have instituted security measures for all information systems under our control so that information will not be lost, misused or altered.

For site security purposes and to ensure that our Internet services remain available to all users, we employ software programs to monitor traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information or otherwise cause damage. In the event of authorized law enforcement investigations and pursuant to any required legal process, information from these sources may be used to help identify an individual.

Your Vermont.gov account information is password-protected for your privacy and security. In certain areas, as with credit card transactions, Vermont.gov uses industry-standard secure socket layer (SSL) encryption to protect data transmissions.

All credit card information is immediately encrypted upon receipt and authenticated through secure 128-bit SSL communications channels.

» Read More About Security on Vermont.gov

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Kids' Page Safety and Privacy

Vermont.gov is not directed to children under 13, and does not knowingly collect personal information from children. For more information about children's privacy generally, please see the Federal Trade Commission's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act External Link Web page.

We hope parents and teachers are involved in children's Internet explorations. It is particularly important for parents to guide their children when children are asked to provide personal information online.

Vermont.gov does not sell products or services for purchase by children. If you are under 18, we specifically ask children to get their parents' permission before providing any information on line - at our site or any other site - and hope parents will always be involved in those decisions. Most importantly, in the event children do provide information through the Vermont.gov Portal, it is only used to enable us to respond to the writer, and not to create profiles of children

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Changes to this Privacy Policy

The Vermont.gov Oversight Committee has approved this policy. Vermont.gov may, with the approval of the Vermont.gov Oversight Committee, revise this policy from time to time. If we make any substantial changes we will notify you by posting a prominent announcement on our pages. This is a statement of policy and should not be interpreted as a contract of any kind.

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More Information About Safe Surfing

The Federal Trade Commission External Link offers important information about safe surfing.

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Contact Us

Vermont Information Consortium
535 Stone Cutters Way
Floor 3, Suite 2
Montpelier, VT 05602
(802) 229-4171 x224
email: portal-feedback@vermont.nicusa.com eMail

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