Thank you for visiting the Chatham County website and reviewing our privacy policy. We will collect no personal information about you when you visit our website unless you choose to provide that information to us.

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

Information collected and stored automatically
If all you do during your visit is 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. Only the following information is automatically collected and stored about your visit:

• The Internet domain (for example, "xcompany.com" if you use a private Internet access account, 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 the 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 send us personal information
If you choose to provide us with personal information – by filling out a form with your personal information and submitting it to us through the website – we use that information to respond to your message and to help us get you the information you have requested. 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. Chatham County does not collect information for commercial marketing.

Public Disclosure
As a general rule, the County does not disclose any personally identifiable information collected online except where you have given us permission, or where the information is requested to be disclosed and is public information under the State of Georgia statutes or other applicable laws. Visitors to the site should be aware that that it is the policy of this state that all state, county, and municipal records shall be open for personal inspection by any person, and thus information collected by the County resulting from the use of its websites may be subject to examination and inspection upon request, if such information is a public record and not otherwise protected from disclosure by statute.

Under Georgia law, e-mail addresses are public records. If you do not want your e-mail address released in response to a public records request, do not send electronic mail to this entity. Instead, make contact by phone or in writing.

Choice
You may decline participation in any activity that asks for information (i.e., surveys or emails). Your choice to not participate will have no effect on your ability to access information on the County's web sites.

Cookies
To better serve you, we occasionally use "cookies" to customize your browsing experience. Cookies are simple text files stored by your web browser and they provide a method of distinguishing among visitors to the web sites. Cookies created on your computer by using our web sites do not contain personally identifiable information and do not compromise your privacy or security. We use the cookie feature to store a randomly generated identifying tag on your computer. If you have further questions about cookies, the Computer Incident Advisory Capacity Unit that monitors computer problems for the U.S. Department of Energy issued a study on March 12, 1998, of the risks to users of cookies, titled "Information Bulletin 1-034: Internet Cookies". You can refuse the cookie or delete the cookie file from your computer at any time by using any one of a number of widely available methods. Your choice to refuse the cookie will not inhibit your access to any of the information available on the County web site. Your acceptance of the cookie will serve to provide you with additional functionality in choosing the information you wish to view on a regular basis.

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

Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, no other attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Raw data logs are used for no other purposes and are scheduled for regular destruction in accordance with State guidelines for records management and retention.

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.

Links to other web sites
The website has links to many other governmental agencies. In some cases we link to private organizations. Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy policy of the new site.