Privacy Policy

We consider "personally identifying information" to be: your name or a unique identifier (such as an IP address), your e-mail address, your mailing address, your telephone number, and any financial information relating to you or your accounts that you may provide us.

Our system does not use "cookies" to place computer files on your system.

As you use our web site, our system collects server log data which will include your IP address, your domain name, the type of browser and operating system you used, the pages you viewed, search requests, in some cases data you submitted via web forms, and, if you linked to our site from another web site, that web site's address. After three months from the time of collection, we aggregate this data and use it for statistical purposes. This is how we discover how many "hits" our site received. The aggregated data helps us to ascertain, for example, the volume of our web site users' interest in portions of our web site, and to help us understand how to improve the navigation and content of our web site.

Personally identifying information that you provide by email or web forms will be used only for such purposes as are described at the point of collection (for example on a web form), such as to send information or products to you, or to respond to your questions or comments. If you provide contact information, NARA staff or its contractors may contact you to clarify your comment or question, or to learn about your level of customer satisfaction with our services.

We do not sell any personal information to third parties.

We may transfer personal information to a third party only in the following cases:

A bank or United States Department of the Treasury account must receive payment for a transaction that you initiated;

A company, that agrees not to sell or use personal information for other purposes, is contracted to assist us with specific services; or

We suspect that you are attempting to change or otherwise damage this web site, or you are using it in violation of Federal or local laws, and we decide to provide personal information to egal authorities.

This information is subpoenaed by Congress or a court.

The first time that you use an area of our site that utilizes animation software, such as "Flash" or "Shockwave," it is possible that our site will provide you an opportunity to go to the software manufacturer's web site so you may download a related plug-in that will enable your browser to show you that part of our web site. This prompt occurs because our system can tell whether your browser has the needed capabilities provided by these plug-ins. Our system does not read or place anything on your hard drive when recognizing your browser's capabilities. While the plug-in(s) are needed to view some content, you retain control and choice about conducting the download. At the time that we create and post the web pages that require these software plug-ins for viewing, they are provided by their manufacturer for download and use free of charge. We can not guarentee, however, that the plug-in will remain free, or that the manufacturer will not collect personally identifying information about you when you elect to download the software from their site. If you choose to visit the manufacturer's web site to obtain the plug-in, please carefully review their posted policies for details about personal privacy and use of downloaded plug-ins.

Although questions, comments, and other communications that we receive generally are not retained as permanent records, please note that it is possible that any mail -- electronic or paper -- that we (or any Federal agency, for that matter) receive could become part of the permanent record of the agency, if the mail is part of materials that are scheduled for permanent retention.