Non-Personal Information That We Collect

If you do nothing but browse our pages during your visit, our website's operating system will automatically record general information about your visit.

Our Web operating system will record the following information:

• Internet domain of your Internet service provider, such as acompany.com or acompany.net, if you use a private internet access account, or yourschool.edu, if you connect from a college or university domain
  
  
• Type and version of the web browser that you are using, such as Netscape 6.0 or Internet Explorer 5.0
  
  
• Type of operating system that you are using, such as UNIX, Windows, or MacIntosh
  
  
• Date and time of your visit to our site and the pages that you accessed during your visit
  
  
• Address of the previous website that you were visiting if you linked to us from a website

We use this information for statistical analysis to help us make our site more useful to visitors. We do not record information about individual visitors.

Cookies

This website uses a "cookie" to help visitors use the web site interactively. A cookie is a small file that a website transfers to the user's computer hard disk, usually for the purpose of tracking the user while he or she is connected to that site.

The cookie on this site does not collect any information about you, only about your browser session. The cookie makes it easier for you to use the dynamic features of these webpages, without having to provide the same information over and over again as you move from one page to another. This site uses a "session" cookie so that the information about your session is destroyed automatically shortly after you close your browser -- it is not permanently stored on your computer.

To protect your privacy, be sure to close your browser completely after you have finished conducting business with a website that uses cookies. If you are concerned about the potential use of information gathered from your computer by cookies, you can set your browser to prompt you before it accepts a cookie. Most Internet browsers have settings that let you identify and reject cookies.

Privacy Act Notice

The information contained in the Common Origination and Disbursement system is subject to the Privacy Act of 1974 (as amended). The Common Origination and Disbursement system contains information about private citizens who are receiving federal student financial aid. The U.S. Department of Education and its partners are committed to protecting the privacy of this information. By entering this system, you agree that you are currently an authorized user of the Common Origination and Disbursement system, and that you will comply with the Privacy Act of 1974 (as amended).

As an authorized user of the Common Origination and Disbursement system, you and your school or organization are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974 (as amended), and must, under penalty of law, protect the data contained in this system from unauthorized use. As an authorized user of this system, and by requesting the loan records of borrowers, you agree to the responsibility of protecting the privacy of the students and their loan information.

The information that we maintain about authorized users of the Common Origination and Disbursement system is also protected by the Privacy Act of 1974 (as amended). Authorized user information will not be used for any purpose other than to maintain a listing of current users, the school they are associated with, and their contact information.

Security and Intrusion Detection

For security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all authorized users, we use special software programs for monitoring network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage to this government computer system. These programs collect no personally-identifiable information about visitors, do collect information that could help us identify someone attempting to tamper with this website. Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, we make no attempts to identify visitors of this website.

Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this system 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.

Information You Provide by Contacting Us

If you contact us by sending an electronic mail (e-mail) message, the message will usually contain your return e-mail address. If you include personally-identifying information in your e-mail because you want us to assist you with a specific problem, we may use that information in contacting other federal agencies or our partners, such as colleges, lenders, or state agencies. In other limited circumstances, such as requests from Congress or other parties, we may be required by law to disclose information that you submit.