Suffolk NYCLU > Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

The following is the ACLU's privacy policy. The Suffolk NYCLU's online privacy policy is coming soon.

The American Civil Liberties Union has created this privacy statement to demonstrate its firm commitment to privacy by informing site visitors of the ACLU's data collection and storage practices, and guidelines for use of visitor data.

For more details about our advocacy work on electronic privacy, see http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/PrivacyMain.cfm

The ACLU has filed comments on the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's notice and request for comments regarding electronic commerce, which may be found at http://archive.aclu.org/congress/l070698a.html

The following statements detail information gathering and dissemination practices for the ACLU's Freedom Network, located at http://archive.aclu.org and any other associated sites using the aclu.org domain.

User Tracking and Data Capture Practices
Our servers collect and aggregate user information site-wide, including anonymous site statistics, such as the number of views of each page. We log domain names and/or IP addresses of visitors (such as umich.edu, aol.com, 209.168.1.1, etc.), which permits us to know "where" visitors are from, or what access service they use, without knowing their individual identities. Because we do not require users to register with us, this "host level" tracking is our primary basis for assessing traffic patterns.

On certain pages such as the ACLU Membership Form, we give users the option of providing us with names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses, and other personal information, and various other kinds of details. This more personal information is gathered only with users` knowing and active permission and participation.

The ACLU website does not use any cookies that are automatically written to your computer's hard drive or retained by the ACLU or our vendors. If you wish to have your login stored as a “cookie” on your computer’s memory, select the “remember my login” option when you login to our website. If you do not select “remember my login”, your information will not be stored on your computer or on our ACLU servers. If you choose to be remembered, the cookie will be stored on your computer solely for the purpose of automatically logging you into our website. The use of “remember my login” is totally optional. It is your choice whether or not to use it. If you choose to use it, it will not use the cookie for any purpose other than to log you in. If you choose not to use it, then you will need to reenter your information every time you login. If you are using a shared or public computer to access our website, we recommend that you do not use “remember my login”, because the cookie would be stored in the shared computer’s memory. (Our activist tools also allow users to have a cookie written to their hard drives to enable them to more easily take action. For more information about this feature, see the section on "Activist Letters" below.)

The ACLU website does set "session specific cookies" to help run its interactive online applications, such as the shopping cart. The session specific cookies only exist in your computer's short term memory (RAM) and only exist as long as the session lasts. They expire (disappear from your computer's memory) when the session ends. These cookies will NOT be written to a user's hard drive. Under no circumstance will any information associated with these cookies be retained or used by the ACLU or its vendors after the session is completed.

In addition, the third party email management provider that oversees the ACLU's newsletter distribution and data handling (see section below) will use cookies for the sole purpose of ensuring that an individual user can only access his/her personal profile and subscription information. This prevents a user from accessing or viewing another subscriber's personal or subscription information. By contract with the ACLU, the vendor will not transfer or sell any information that it collects from users of the ACLU website to a third party.

We review and discard the information in some cases (e.g. IP address logs for file transfers), while in others we may use the information to tailor our users` Web experience in the form of custom content or results drawn from databases. On some pages, users can sign up to receive additional information by e-mail through an e-mail subscription service (as discussed below), or by other means, including postal mail. Personal information that has been volunteered to us may also be combined with data from third parties, such as Congressional district maps, to improve our services to members. No such combining will be done for marketing purposes.

We may at some point share user information, including e-mail addresses, with our local offices for the above named purposes. Website visitor information is not shared or exchanged with other parties, with the exception of those visitors who also become ACLU members (see below regarding ACLU Member Address Exchange) and as provided for in the section on email list subscriptions below.

E-mail addresses of visitors and members are never exchanged with other organizations except as provided for in the section on email list subscriptions below.