Privacy Policy

Onslow County Web Site Privacy Policy

Purpose

Thank you for visiting the Onslow County web site. Our web site is designed to make it easier and more efficient for you to interact with the County government, obtain information, and implement the principals of open government. Your confidence and trust are important to us and we are committed to preserving your privacy.

This policy describes privacy practices regarding information collected from and by the Onslow County web site. It contains information about data collection and how that information is used. This policy applies only to the official Onslow County web site.

Automatic Collection of Certain Information

Personal information is not collected from visitors who simply browse the County's web site or who merely download information from it. The County endeavors to collect only the minimum amount of information needed and most web pages on the site are accessible without providing any personal information. In compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Policy Act, the County does not intentionally collect any personal information from children under the age of 13. However, given the anonymous nature of the world wide web, visitors should be aware that the collection of personal information requested from or volunteered by children online or by email will necessarily be treated in the same manner as information given by an adult. Among others, this means that the information may become a public record and be subject to public access. We ask that parents carefully guide their children regarding on-line access to the Onslow County web site. We further ask that children get their parents' permission before providing any information to us.

While the County's web server maintains logs of user activity to help it manage the web site, information stored in the server or in cookies does not identify visitors personally. The web server may store general information such as domain name, the IP address from which the visitor accessed the site, the type of browser and operating system used, the date and time the site was accessed, the pages visited, and the address of the site from which the visitor may have linked to the Onslow County web site. The County will not sell any information collected or given to it over its web site.

The County's uses this information to learn how many visitors its has, where the visitors come from, which parts of the web site are of most interest to visitors, and other facts that will help the County improve its web site and the services it offers.

The Onslow County web site may use cookies for certain purposes.  Cookies or other technology may transfer information from this web site to a visitor's hard disk for record-keeping purposes. Cookies or similar technology can make the internet more useful by storing information about the visitor's preferences on a particular site. The use of cookies or similar technology is an industry standard, and this web site, like many others, uses them to provide useful features for our users. Cookies in and of themselves do not personally identify visitors, although they do identify the visitor's computer. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. If you prefer, you can set your browser to refuse cookies.

Public Records

Onslow County is governed by the North Carolina public records laws. E-mail messages sent to a County electronic mail address automatically enter into the County's electronic email system and thereby immediately become public documents.  This means that information the County receives online by email may be disclosed to any person making a public records request, unless the record is exempted from disclosure. Only very narrowly defined types of information are exempt from disclosure as public records.    Consequently, it is always prudent to draft electronic correspondence with the understanding that it could be disclosed as a public record to any third person.