Privacy Policy

General Information

The COVID-19 Prevention Network (CoVPN) provides this website as a public service. The information on this website is not in the public domain and may not be distributed or copied. All images on this website are copyrighted and may not be reused without permission.

How CoVPN Collects Information

Protecting your privacy is very important to CoVPN. We do not collect personally identifiable information (PII) about you during your visit to the CoVPN website unless you choose to give it to us.

CoVPN uses Google Analytics to collect information about your visit for statistical purposes and to make it more useful to visitors. Types of information collected include, but are not limited to, include:

• Internet domain from which you access our website
• Type of browser and operating system used to access our site
• Date and time you access our site
• Duration of website visit
• Pages you visited and information you download
• Address of the website that brought visitors to the CoVPN website, such as google.com or bing.com
• Demographic data.

We make no attempts to identify individual users or their usage habits, except when it may be required for authorized law enforcement investigations. We never collect information for commercial marketing or any purpose unrelated to the CoVPN’s mission and goals. CoVPN is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the privacy policies are in line with privacy policies for the NIH and Department of Health and Human Services. See NIH Privacy Policies and HHS Privacy Policy.

Cookies

Websites can automatically place small text files, known as “cookies,” on the computers of their visitors. So long as they do not expire or get deleted, cookies are used to identify the unique browser used by the visitor. On each subsequent visit to the website, the visitor’s browser will retrieve the cookie, allowing us to aggregate the number of return visitors. CoVPN uses “cookies” to test and optimize our website design and content. We do not use the information associated with cookies to track individual user activity on the Internet outside this website.

We use two types of cookies on our websites:

• Session Cookies: We use session cookies to gather data for technical purposes, such as improving navigation through our website and generating statistics about how the website is used. Session cookies are temporary text files that expire when you leave our website. When cookies expire, they are automatically deleted from your computer. We do not use session cookies to collect personal information, and we do not share data collected from session cookies.
• Multi-session (Persistent) Cookies: We use multi-session cookies, or persistent cookies, to customize our website for frequent visitors, test variations of website design and content, and to run heatmaps and screen recordings by Hotjar. Multi-session cookies are cookies that are stored over more than a single session on your computer. We do not use multi-session cookies to collect personal information, and we do not share data collected from multi-session cookies. Our multi-session cookies are set to expire no more than two years after your last visit to our website. After two years, they are automatically deleted from your computer. CoVPN is unable to identify an individual by using such technologies.

Web Measurement and Customization Tools

On some portions of our website we have enabled Universal Analytics (UA), and other third-party software, to provide aggregate demographic and interest data of our visitors. This information cannot be used to identify you as an individual.

CoVPN occasionally uses ad platforms to provide online advertisement delivery and tracking. CoVPN may employ tools to support display advertising, data collection via advertising cookies and anonymous identifiers, geofencing, and/or demographics and interest reporting. In general, this means that third-party vendors, may show CoVPN ads on sites across the Internet based upon visits to CoVPN websites. To implement these tools, CoVPN and third-party vendors, use first-party cookies and third-party cookies together to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on past visits to CoVPN websites. Data collection via advertising cookies and anonymous identifiers will be hosted but will not distribute any Personal Identifiable Information (PII).

How to Opt Out or Disable Cookies

You can take actions to block cookies by opting out. Blocking session cookies from your computer will not affect your access to the content and tools on our website. Blocking multi-session or persistent cookies may affect the personalization of information on websites

Security Protection

The U.S. government maintains the CoVPN website. It is protected by various provisions of Title 18, U.S. Code. Violations of Title 18 are subject to criminal prosecution in federal court.

For website security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, we use software programs to monitor traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information or otherwise cause damage. In the event of authorized law enforcement investigations, and pursuant to any required legal process, information from these sources may be used to help identify a person.

How Is Personal Information Protected?

Visitors do not have to give us personal information when visiting the CoVPN website.

If visitors choose to give us additional information about themselves through an email message form, etc., CoVPN keeps the information only as long as needed to respond to questions or to fulfill the stated purpose of the communication.

Disclosure

CoVPN does not disclose, give, sell, or transfer any personal information about our website visitors, unless required for law enforcement or by statute.

Your Visit to CoVPN Third-Party Websites

Third-party websites and applications are Web-based technologies that are not exclusively operated or controlled by CoVPN. These include applications hosted on non-government sites and those embedded within an CoVPN Web page.

As part of the Open Government Directive, we use a variety of new technologies and social media tools to communicate and interact with our audiences. By using some of these applications, your personally identifiable information (PII) can become available or accessible to CoVPN, regardless of whether we solicit or collect it.

For questions or comments about the CoVPN privacy policy, please contact .