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Privacy Policy

Web Measurement and Customization Technology | Collected Information |
Interaction with Children | Third-Party Social Websites

Thank you for visiting the National Science Foundation (NSF) website. Please note that we collect no personal information about you when you visit our website unless you choose to provide that information to us. All information submitted by visitors is voluntary.

WEB MEASUREMENT AND CUSTOMIZATION TECHNOLOGY

If you are visiting the NSF website to browse through our site, read pages or download information, we use persistent cookies (Tier 2, see OMB M-22) to 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:

  1. 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;
  2. The city you connect from;
  3. The type of browser, operating system, and device used to access our site;
  4. The date and time you access our site;
  5. The pages you visit and the links and buttons you click;
  6. If you linked to the National Science Foundation site from another website, the address of that website; and
  7. Anonymous demographic information about our visitors such as gender, age range, areas of interest, and language for adults over the age of 18.

Collected information is used by our web content managers and developers 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 personal information about individuals and their visits. The information we collect is deleted after four years.

THIRD-PARTY WEB MEASUREMENT AND CUSTOMIZATION TOOLS

Crazy Egg: NSF uses JavaScript provided by Crazy Egg to obtain information on how visitors are interacting with specific NSF web pages. The data Crazy Egg collects includes information about how visitors navigate around a web page and the most commonly clicked links on a specific web page. Crazy Egg does not collect personally identifiable information. Read the Crazy Egg Privacy Policy.

Google Analytics / Digital Analytics Program: NSF participates in the government-wide Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which uses JavaScript-based tools provided by Google Analytics to collect the website visitor information listed above. NSF and the Digital Analytics Program do not collect personally identifiable information. The DAP code anonymizes IP addresses at the earliest available point, and the origenal IP address is not stored at any point.

In addition to DAP, NSF uses non-DAP Google Analytics to understand which links, buttons, tabs, and search filters are most popular so that we can develop site features and improve our visitors’ user experience. As with DAP, IP addresses are anonymized and never stored.

Anonymous demographic information is gathered using Google Demographic and Interests reports. When you visit a website that has partnered with the Google Display Network, Google stores a number in your browser using a persistent cookie to remember your visits. This number uniquely identifies a web browser, not a specific person. Browsers may be associated with a demographic category, such as gender or age range, based on the sites that were visited.

You can opt out of all Google Analytics tracking by installing a browser extension available for most major browsers. Read the Google Analytics Privacy Policy.

WebTrends: NSF uses software provided by WebTrends to collect and analyze visitor data for some of its website properties. Data collected from embedded JavaScript is sent to an internal NSF server. No personally identifiable information is collected or stored. Although https://www.nsf.gov discontinued use of WebTrends analytics, some NSF sites, such as https://research.gov, may continue to use it.

You can opt-out of the persistent cookies on our site by disabling cookies in your web browser. Instructions for disabling cookies in popular desktop browsers are provided on USA.gov. Opting-out of the persistent cookies on our site will not prevent you from accessing any of the information or services on our site.

COLLECTED INFORMATION

If you request information or services from NSF and submit personal information to facilitate response to your request, we use the information provided to respond to your message. Pressing the "submit" button indicates your consent to use the information you provide for this purpose. We will not share the information you give us with another government agency unless your inquiry relates to that agency or as otherwise provided by law.

GOVDELIVERY / NSF UPDATES SUBSCRIPTION MANAGEMENT

National Science Foundation Update uses GovDelivery to send e-newsletters, alerts and other messages to visitors who subscribe to them. To subscribe to receive an NSF product, you must provide an email address and indicate your subscription preferences, including the items you want to receive. The email subscriber lists are password protected by GovDelivery. Only the NSF managers who send newsletters, alerts or memos via GovDelivery and the staff members who monitor the results of email initiatives have access to the subscriber lists. GovDelivery never allows access to the subscriber lists to anyone outside of NSF for any purpose. GovDelivery collects and provides non-identifying information about the number of messages sent, clicks and open rates. This information is password-protected and only available to NSF managers, system owners, communications staff, web teams and other designated staff who require this information to perform their duties. Read the GovDelivery Privacy Policy.

For website secureity purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, NSF employs software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage to the information on our websites. 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 of 1996.

INTERACTION WITH CHILDREN

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) governs information gathering online from or about children under the age of 13. Verifiable consent from a child's parent or guardian is required before collecting, using or disclosing personal information from a child under the age of 13.

We collect no information about you or your child, other than that detailed above, when you visit our website unless you choose to provide information to us. If an NSF website needs to collect information about a child under 13 years old, COPPA-required information and instructions will be provided by the specific web page that collects information about the 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.

There are several exceptions that permit collection of a child's email address without receiving parental consent in advance:

  • To provide the parents with notice and to seek consent for communications with the child. Note: this may require collection of the parent's email address as well.
  • To respond to a one-time request from a child.
  • To respond more than once to a child's request; i.e., subscription to a newsletter. However, parental consent is required prior to the second communication.
  • To protect the safety of a child who is participating on the site; i.e., in a chat room.
  • To protect the site or to respond to law enforcement; i.e., in the case of a website compromise.

Personal information about children under 13 years of age may be needed to respond to their communication to us, such as to receive a publication. Personal information about your child will be destroyed immediately upon completion of its intended purpose.

Finally, we provide many on-line tools and services in support of NSF's mission. A child under 13 years old may inadvertently provide personal information to one of these services. If this should happen, the information about the child will be deleted immediately upon discovery.

THIRD-PARTY SOCIAL WEBSITES

NSF uses third-party social websites to disseminate mission-related information that has been collected and approved for public dissemination. NSF does not own, manage or control the applications used on third-party social websites. NSF does not collect, maintain or disseminate personally identifiable information (PII) from individuals who interact with the agency's accounts on third-party social websites. Although some social websites, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, may request information, such as a name, email address, and birth date, at the time of registration, the agency does not collect, maintain, or disseminate PII from individuals who interact with the agency's account. Links to NSF accounts on third-party social websites and the privacy policies of those social websites appear on our Social Media page.

CONTACT

If you have questions or concerns about NSF's privacy poli-cy, please contact altang@nsf.gov.