USIO Privacy Policy

The following is the privacy policy for the www.iodp-usio.org, iodp.tamu.edu, and iodp.ldeo.columbia.edu servers that constitute the USIO web site.

1. Cookies are used in the database portions of the web site to track the password of individuals submitting data queries. The information collected is not archived for long term use. (A cookie is a file written to the visitor's hard drive and contains information used to track such things as passwords and the pages that have been visited.) Each cookie expires when the browser session that created it is terminated.

2. If you send us an electronic mail message or fill out a form that contains personal information, that information will only be used for official IODP-USIO purposes and will not be distributed to any outside parties.

3. Technical information is collected for site management purposes. This information is not used in any manner that would reveal personal information and will not be released to any outside parties unless required to do so in legal proceedings.

4. We use software such as WebTrends (TAMU), Net Tracker (JOI), and Funnel Web Analyzer (LDEO) to compile web site statistics that are used for assessing what information is of most interest, to determine user software and hardware specifications, and to identify system performance or problem areas. The following information is collected for this analysis:

• User Client hostname: The hostname (or IP address if DNS is disabled) of the user/client requesting access.
• HTTP header, "user-agent": The type of browser, its version, and the operating system it's running on.
• HTTP header, "referer": The referer specifies the page from which the client accessed the current page.
• System date: The date and time of the user/client request.
• Full request: The exact request the user/client made.
• Status: The status code the server returned to the user/client.
• Content length: The content length, in bytes, of the document sent to the user/client.
• Method: The request method used.
• Universal Resource Identifier (URI): The location of a resource on the server.
• Query string of the URI: Anything after the question mark in a URI.
• Protocol: The transport protocol and version used.