The following information is to be used as a guideline for understanding Ripley County Health Department’s Privacy and Security Policies.
- We do not collect personally identifiable information (PII) about you unless you choose to provide that information to us.
- Any personal information you chose to provide is protected by security practices.
- Non-personal information related to your visit to our website may be automatically collected and temporarily stored.
- We does not disclose, give, sell, or transfer any personal information about our visitors unless required for law enforcement or by Federal law.
Health Information Privacy
For more information on your health information privacy and security rights, or on the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, visit the HHS Office for Civil Rights.
Privacy Act Information
You may also want to read information about the Privacy Act. If you have privacy questions or issues, please contact us at 573.996.2181.
PERSONAL INFORMATION VOLUNTARILY SUBMITTED
If you choose to provide us with personal information — for example by completing a “Contact Us” form, leaving a comment, sending email, or completing a survey — we may use that information to respond to your message and/or help us get you the information or services you requested. Submitting personal information (name, address, telephone number, email address, etc.) is voluntary and is not required to access information on our website.
We retain the information only for as long as necessary to respond to your question or request, in most cases no longer than three months. Information submitted electronically is maintained and destroyed as required by the Federal Records Act and records schedules of the National Archives and Records Administration. It may be subject to disclosure in certain cases (for example, if required by a Freedom of Information Act request, court order, or Congressional access request, or if authorized by a Privacy Act System of Records Notice). It is subject to the Privacy Act if maintained in a Privacy Act system.
INTERACTION WITH CHILDREN ONLINE
The Department will take all reasonable steps necessary to protect the privacy and safety of any child from whom information is collected, as required by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). A child’s parent or guardian is required to provide consent before HHS collects, uses, or shares personal information from a child under age 13.
Information and instructions will be provided by the specific Web page that collects information about a child. The Web page will specify exactly what the information will be used for, who will see it, and how long it will be kept.
INFORMATION AUTOMATICALLY COLLECTED AND STORED
When you browse through our website, we use Google’s Universal Analytics (UA) software to gather and temporarily store a variety of information about your visit. However, this information cannot be used to identify you as an individual. The basic information we collect during your visit includes:
- The name of the domain you use to access the Internet (for example, Verizon.com, if you are using a Verizon online account, or stanford.edu, if you are connecting from Stanford University’s domain);
- The date and time of your visit to our website;
- The pages and documents you viewed on our website;
- The URL of the website you visited prior to ours;
- The type and version of your Web browser and operating system; and
- Your location at the time of your visit, down to the city-level
We do not associate any of the data we collect with you as an individual. Instead, we aggregate this data from all visits in order to improve our website and provide a better user experience to our visitors. The aggregate data is available only to Web managers and other designated staff who require this information to perform their duties. It is retained only for as long as needed for proper analysis. The Google Analytics Privacy Policy is available at https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/
DEMOGRAPHIC AND INTEREST DATA
On some portions of our website we have enabled Universal Analytics (UA), and other third-party software (listed below), to provide aggregate demographic and interest data of our visitors. This information cannot be used to identify you as an individual. While these tools are used by some websites to serve advertisements, HHS only uses them to measure demographic data. HHS has no control over advertisements served on other websites. For each listed software, we have included links to Web pages where you can opt-out of having these tools collect data and/or serve you interest-based advertising.
COOKIES
Websites can automatically place small text files, known as “cookies,” on the computers of their visitors. So long as they do not expire or get deleted, cookies identify the unique browser used by the visitor. On each subsequent visit to the website, the visitor’s browser will retrieve the cookie, allowing us to aggregate the number of return visitors. We use “cookies” to test and optimize our website design and content. We use two types of cookies on our websites:
- We use session cookies to gather data for technical purposes, such as improving navigation through our website and generating statistics about how the website is used. Session cookies are temporary text files that expire when you leave our website. When cookies expire, they are automatically deleted from your computer. We do not use session cookies to collect personal information, and we do not share data collected from session cookies.
- We use multi-session cookies, or persistent cookies, to customize our website for frequent visitors and to test variations of website design and content. Multi-session cookies are cookies that are stored over more than a single session on your computer. We do not use multi-session cookies to collect personal information, and we do not share data collected from multi-session cookies. Our multi-session cookies are set to expire no more than two years after your last visit to our website. After two years, they are automatically deleted from your computer. HHS is unable to identify an individual by using such technologies.
You can take actions to block cookies by opting out . Blocking session cookies from your computer will not affect your access to the content and tools on our website. Blocking multi-session or persistent cookies may affect the personalization of the information on those sites.
WEBSITE SECURITY
This site is maintained by WPEngine and SEMO.net. It is protected by federal, state and local laws. You can be arrested and prosecuted for violating these laws.
For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, we use software programs to monitor traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information or otherwise cause damage. In the event of law enforcement investigations and as part of any required legal process, information from these sources may be used to help identify an individual.