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

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 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.

Information Collected and Stored Automatically
If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the website, read pages, or download information, we will gather and store certain information about your visit automatically. This information does not identify you personally. We automatically collect and store only the following information about your visit:

• The Internet domain (for example, "xcompany.com" if you use a private Internet access acount, or "yourschool.edu" if you connect from a university's domain) and 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 our website;
• The type of browser and operating system used to access our site;
• The date and time you access our site;
• The pages you visit; and
• If you linked to our website from another website, the address of that website.

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.

If you participate in a Virtual Forum by logging into the live chat, a server log records the date and time of login/logout, login name used by you, and IP address. This information will only be used if necessary to block access to the chat by any disruptive or abusive person, or in the course of a lawful investigation by appropriate law enforcement authorities.

Cookies
A persistent cookie is a line of text that gets saved by your browser to a file on your hard drive. Our site does not use persistent cookies.

If You Send Us Personal Information
If you choose to provide us with personal information by sending an e-mail to Avagene Moore or Amy Sebring, we use that information to respond to your message and to help us provide you with information that you request. We do not collect personal information for any other purposes. The information you provide is not given to any private organizations or private persons. The EIIP does not collect or use information for commercial marketing.

Mailing List
If you choose to subscribe to our mailing list, eiip@emforum.org, your email address is used for no other purposes than the reason for which you subscribed, that is, to receive program announcements. The subscriber list is accessible only to Avagene Moore, Amy Sebring, and our server administrator for maintenance purposes, and is not shared with anyone else.

Chat
Individuals who wish to participate in our online Virtual Forum live chats are requested to login with their real first and last names (user name). We make no attempt to validate participants. Beyond the automatic collection described above, if you make a comment or ask a question during a live chat, then the session transcript will record your user name, which will subsequently be published. Chat participants may request that their user names not be published in the transcript by request to Amy Sebring, asebring@emforum.org.

Links to Other Sites
Our website has links to the websites of many other emergency management resources. Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy policy of the new site.