The City of Tracy believes in your privacy and your right to relative anonymity. The following guidelines are provided to clarify our responsibilities and actions to protect that privacy and the limits to which we can go to ensure your personal information remains confidential.
Non-Specific User Information
Every visitor to our site has certain bits of information about their visit collected. None of this information is personally identifiable and cannot be traced back to you. These bits of information include the IP address you connected from, the name and version of your computer's Operating System, the type of web browser used and a history of pages viewed. This information is used aggregately as a simple gauge to determine how our site is being used.
The City of Tracy uses non-specific user information to tally number of visitors, general surfing habits and page/section popularity.
Cookies are defined as:
Persistent Client-State HTTP Cookies are files containing information about visitors to a web site (e.g. user name and preferences). This information is provided by the user during the first visit to a web server. The server records this information in a text file and stores this file on the visitor's hard drive. When the visitor accesses the same web site again the server looks for the cookie and configures itself based on the information provided. (netiq.com)
The City of Tracy uses relatively few cookies and does not allow third party cookies (cookies which originate from a server other than our own) to be distributed through our pages. Cookies are used on the Tracy website only to set preferences and never to track, identify or monitor users. The Tracy website considers information gathered from cookies to be Non-Specific User Information.
Voluntary Personal Information
Choosing to send personal information such as your name, email address or phone number is a voluntary action and implies the consent for the City of Tracy to use this information to personally identify you based on the supplied information. This is no different than visiting a City facility and providing these details or offering this information via telephone.
Actions that are considered to be voluntary personal information submittals include filling out online forms for surveys, services, tools or applications and submitting site feedback in the form of email. The City reserves the right to use voluntarily provided personal information in a manner similar to personal information volunteered for other official City business.
Concerted effort is made to protect your voluntary personal information. It is impossible to guarantee complete protection of any data, but we have implemented security measures to prevent data theft and loss of personal information. We will not rent, sell or provide your voluntary personal information to any third party without your express consent and will never disclose your personal information provided in a business transaction (such as credit card information) except as required by law.
As a governmental agency, we are governed by California open records laws. It is important that you understand most business conducted with municipal governments such as the City of Tracy becomes a public record. Public records as defined by state law, and not made confidential elsewhere in the California Codes, may be posted for electronic access through this web site. This includes most city permits you have applied for and requests for a city service. These same records have long been open for public inspection by anyone requesting them in person, by mail or by telephone at the appropriate government office.