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Privacy Policy

DuPage County Online Privacy Policy

Purpose

DuPage County is committed to protecting individual privacy and securing the personal information made available to us when you visit dupageco.org, use our mobile app, or visit DuPage County pages hosted by other sites (such as our official profiles on social networking sites). This Privacy Policy describes what information is made available to the County and how that information is used and retained.

NOTE: Per County Board Resolution CB-0030-11, Social Security Numbers will not be gathered via the County website. 

Revision History

  • 08-26-2014 New Document – Approved by Technology Committee Effective Date August 26, 2014

Information Received and Retained by DuPage County Online Platforms

Information You Give Us

You do not have to provide DuPage County with any personal information or create a user account to access information on dupageco.org. However, for some services, we may need some personal information from you such as your name, address, telephone number, and email address. For example:

  • The “Contact DuPage County” form asks for basic contact information so we can respond to your request;
  • The sign up forms for e-newsletters asks for basic contact information so we can send e-newsletters to you.

Visits to DuPageco.org

When you visit dupageco.org, the following basic information is automatically received and stored by the web servers hosting dupageco.org:

The originating Internet Protocol (IP) address;

  • The internet domain name;
  • Information about your computer or mobile set-up (e.g., type and version of web browser, operating system, screen resolution, and connection speed);
  • The pages on dupageco.org that you visit;
  • The internet address, or URL, of the website that connected you to our site, if you accessed dupageco.org via a link on another page (i.e., “referral traffic”); and
  • The amount of data transmitted from dupageco.org to your computer.

DuPage County also uses web measurement and customization technologies (such as “cookies"). You can choose not to accept cookies from any website, including dupageco.org, by changing your browser settings.

Email Subscriptions

In order to manage DuPage County email subscription lists, we retain the names and email address of our email subscribers, as well as other information they may have shared with us (e.g., addresses and phone numbers), logs of emails we send, and automatically generated email data used to improve our email communications. If we use a third party tool to send the email, data will be automatically generated and includes:

  • The recipient’s email client;
  • Whether the email was opened;
  • If a link in the message was clicked;
  • Whether an email was delivered;
  • If the email was forwarded; and
  • If the email was printed.

If, at any time, you wish to stop receiving our messages, simply click on the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each email message.

Third-Party Websites

DuPage County maintains official pages or accounts on third-party websites such as Facebook and Twitter in order to better engage with the DuPage County citizens. Your activity on those sites is governed by the third-party website’s security and privacy policies. Users of third-party sites often share information with the general public, user community, and/or the third-party operating the site. Consequently, you should review the privacy policies of third-party sites before using them and ensure that you understand how your information may be shared and used. You should also adjust privacy settings on your account on any third-party site to match your preferences.

For aggregate statistical analysis and to improve the quality of our services, we may integrate web measurement tools with our social media pages. These tools enable basic analysis of social media traffic (such as the number of people visiting a certain page) and do not collect personally identifiable information.

How Information is Used

If you choose to provide us with information, we may use that information to contact you, respond to your message or petition, or provide you the information or services you requested. In order to serve you better, we may analyze multiple sources of data you have provided (for example, to look up whether you previously contacted DuPage County about the same topic so that we do not send you a duplicative response). We may also use messages or comments collected through dupageco.org or official social media pages for our own purposes, such as to inform policy decisions or in public advocacy.

We may use data you provide and automatically generated data for statistical analysis to assess, for example, what information is of interest to users, technical design specifications, and system performance. This allows us to make general improvements to our site as well as to offer tailored content to email subscribers (e.g., a follow-up message to subscribers interested in a specific topic based on information they have provided or automatically generated data).

Sharing of this Information

Information you choose to share with DuPage County (directly and via third party sites) may be treated as public information. We may, for example, publish compilations of messages or comments collected through dupageco.org or official social media pages and provide them to County leaders, members of the press, or other individuals outside of the County Government. However, we exercise discretion to limit such disclosures to protect your privacy (for example, we generally do not publish last names of commenters).

DuPage County uses a third-party analytics provider (currently Google Analytics) to analyze data from cookies. The third-party analytics provider does not receive personally identifiable information through these cookies and is prohibited from combining, matching or cross-referencing dupageco.org information with any other information.

Please review Google Analytics’ privacy policy for additional information.

Within DuPage County, we restrict access to personally identifiable information to employees, contractors, and vendors subject to non-disclosure requirements who require access to this information in order to perform their official duties and exercise controls to limit what data they can view based on the specific needs of their position.

In some cases, we may share information you have provided or automatically generated information with other government agencies in response to lawful law enforcement requests or to protect dupageco.org from security threats.

We do not use or share your information for commercial purposes and, except as described above, we do not exchange or otherwise disclose this information.

Third-Party Tools and Sites

Links to External Sites

Dupageco.org and other DuPage County platforms and pages may link to websites created and maintained by other public and/or private organizations and individuals. When you follow a link to an external site, you are leaving dupageco.org and are subject to the external site‘s privacy and security policies. We do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of information contained on an external site. We also do not endorse the site’s sponsor, any views they express, or any products or services they offer.

DuPage County Pages on Third-Party Websites 

Your activity on those sites (ex. Facebook and Twitter) is governed by the third-party website’s security and privacy policies.

DuPage County Content Embedded in Third-Party Sites

In some instances, a third-party website may feature embedded DuPage County content served by dupageco.org. For example, other websites might embed the dupageco.org’s Building Permit widget. The embedded dupageco.org content automatically generates DuPage County server logs and may set a DuPage County cookie (see Cookies).

Security

We take reasonable precautions to protect our site and information automatically collected by dupageco.org or voluntarily submitted to dupageco.org or an official DuPage County page on a third-party site. For example, we restrict access to personally identifiable information to employees, contractors, and vendors subject to non-disclosure requirements who require access to this information in order to perform their official duties and exercise controls to limit what data they can view based on the specific needs of their position. Access to official DuPage County accounts on third-party sites is limited to the individuals who administer those accounts, and all official DuPage County accounts are clearly labeled.

We also utilize commonly used practices and technical controls to protect the information in our possession or control, along with dupageco.org itself. These practices and controls include, but are not limited to: encrypting the transfer of personal information over the internet via Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), using high-strength firewalls and intrusion detection systems (IDS) to safeguard personal information, and maintaining strict technical controls and procedures to ensure the integrity of all data on dupageco.org.

We periodically review our processes and systems to verify compliance with industry best practices and to ensure the highest level of security for our website.

Glossary

  • Internet Protocol (IP): A computer’s IP address establishes its location on the internet and allows other computers, such as those hosting dupageco.org, to send it content and other information.
  • Domain name: For example, “xcompany.com” if you use a private Internet access account, or “yourschool.edu” if you are connecting from a university’s domain.
  • Cookies: A small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while the user is browsing that website.
  • Device token: A unique string used to identify devices.
  • Email client: The email client is the program used to access and manage a user's email (e.g., Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!)
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