St. Mary’s County Health Department is committed to protecting your privacy and developing technology that gives you the most powerful and safe online experience. This Statement of Privacy applies to the St. Mary’s County Health Department website and governs data collection and usage. By using the St. Mary’s County Health Department website, you consent to the data practices described in this statement.
Collection of your Personal Information
St. Mary’s County Health Department collects personally identifiable information, such as your e-mail address, name, home or work address, or telephone number. St. Mary’s County Health Department also collects anonymous demographic information, which is not unique to you, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests, and favorites.
There is also information about your computer hardware and software that is automatically collected by St. Mary’s County Health Department. This information can include your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times, and referring website addresses. This information is used by St. Mary’s County Health Department for the operation of the service, to maintain quality of the service, and to provide general statistics regarding use of the St. Mary’s County Health Department website.
Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data through St. Mary’s County Health Department public message boards, this information may be collected and used by others. Note: St. Mary’s County Health Department does not read any of your private online communications.
St. Mary’s County Health Department encourages you to review the privacy statements of websites you choose to link to from St. Mary’s County Health Department so that you can understand how those websites collect, use, and share your information. St. Mary’s County Health Department is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on websites outside of the St. Mary’s County Health Department and St. Mary’s County Health Department family of websites.
Use of your Personal Information
St. Mary’s County Health Department collects and uses your personal information to operate the St. Mary’s County Health Department website and deliver the services you have requested. St. Mary’s County Health Department also uses your personally identifiable information to inform you of other products or services available from St. Mary’s County Health Department and its affiliates. St. Mary’s County Health Department may also contact you via surveys to conduct research about your opinion of current services or of potential new services that may be offered.
St. Mary’s County Health Department does not sell, rent, or lease its customer lists to third parties. St. Mary’s County Health Department may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, your unique personally identifiable information (e-mail, name, address, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party. In addition, St. Mary’s County Health Department may share data with trusted partners to help us perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, provide customer support, or arrange for deliveries. All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to St. Mary’s County Health Department, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.
St. Mary’s County Health Department does not use or disclose sensitive personal information, such as race, religion, or political affiliations, without your explicit consent.
St. Mary’s County Health Department keeps track of the websites and pages our customers visit within St. Mary’s County Health Department, in order to determine what St. Mary’s County Health Department services are the most popular. This data is used to deliver customized content and advertising within St. Mary’s County Health Department to customers whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area.
St. Mary’s County Health Department websites will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on St. Mary’s County Health Department or the site; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of St. Mary’s County Health Department; and, (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of St. Mary’s County Health Department, or the public.
Use of Cookies
The St. Mary’s County Health Department website use “cookies” to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.
One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize St. Mary’s County Health Department pages, or register with St. Mary’s County Health Department site or services, a cookie helps St. Mary’s County Health Department to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same St. Mary’s County Health Department website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the St. Mary’s County Health Department features that you customized.
You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the St. Mary’s County Health Department services or websites you visit.
Security of your Personal Information
St. Mary’s County Health Department secures your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. St. Mary’s County Health Department secures the personally identifiable information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. When personal information (such as a credit card number) is transmitted to other websites, it is protected using encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.
Changes to this Statement
St. Mary’s County Health Department will occasionally update this Statement of Privacy to reflect company and customer feedback. St. Mary’s County Health Department encourages you to periodically review this Statement to be informed of how St. Mary’s County Health Department is protecting your information.
Contact Information
St. Mary’s County Health Department welcomes your comments regarding this Statement of Privacy. If you believe that St. Mary’s County Health Department has not adhered to this Statement, please contact St. Mary’s County Health Department at smchd.healthdept@maryland.gov. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly determine and remedy the problem.