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Privacy Policy

This Web site is provided as a public service by NOAA's Emergency Response Division (NOAA ERD). We welcome you as a site visitor. Here is an explanation of how we handle information we learn about you during your visit.

Most important, we do not collect personal information that would allow us to identify you by name or contact you directly (such as your email address), unless you choose to send that information to us. How we handle information about you depends on how you use our Web site:

  1. If you visit our site, we collect and store the following information about you:

    • Your host name or IP address.
    • The date and time when you visited pages on our site.
    • The pages you viewed.

    This information is deleted after 90 days. We use this information for site management purposes: for example, to learn how people visit the pages on our site, to find out which pages are of most interest to visitors, and to identify problems people are encountering on our site.

  2. A cookie is a small bit of text that either is used only for the duration of a Web site visit ("session cookie"), or is saved on a user's hard drive in order to identify that user or information about that user the next time the user logs on to a Web site ("persistent cookie"). This Web site does not use persistent cookies or any other persistent tracking technology. When you browse or search this Web site, it uses session cookies to provide streamlined navigation for you. These session cookies are deleted from the server after your session ends, and information from them is not collected or saved.

  3. If you identify yourself by sending us an email containing personal information (such as your name and email address), we use your information to respond to your request. We then delete your email unless we are required to keep it longer by statute or official policy. Electronically submitted information is maintained and destroyed according to the principles of the Federal Records Act and the regulations and records schedules approved by the National Archives and Records Administration. In limited circumstances, information submitted to us, including emails, may become an agency record and therefore might be subject to a Freedom of Information Act request.

  4. This Web site offers a Google Map that accesses Google.com in order to display locations of oil spills and other incidents.

We do not use information about you in any other ways, and we do not use persistent tracking technologies.

This privacy policy applies only to this Web site. NOAA also has a general privacy policy.

You can obtain more information about your rights under the Privacy Act of 1974 (as amended) at this Web site: http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/fed_prog/foia/foia.htm

For the protection of users of our Web site, we have safeguards in place to identify and prevent unauthorized attempts to access or cause harm to information and systems. Unauthorized attempts to add or modify information on this Web site are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.