Privacy Policy

Protecting your privacy is important to the City of Lowell. This privacy policy explains the City of Lowell’s collection, use, and retention of information about you. We want you to understand what information we may gather, how we may share it, and how it is retained, so that you can make an informed choice about your use of the City of Lowell website(s).

This document contains the Privacy Policy for the City of Lowell’s website(s). Use of the City of Lowell’s website(s) constitutes acceptance of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to or understand any or all of this policy, please do not use the City of Lowell’s website(s).

Privacy
Information We Gather
Information We Share
Information We Retain

Privacy

Your privacy is regarded by the City of Lowell as an important matter. Since some of the information that may be gathered through the City of Lowell’s website(s) is subject to the Public Records Law, we can not assure you absolute privacy. Information you provide to us may be made available to members of the public through that law.

Information We Gather

During the course of interacting with the City of Lowell’s website(s), the City of Lowell may obtain information from you in a variety of ways:

Website Usage Summary Statistics
Statistics are gathered for site management and other purposes such as assessing what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance issues. The information that we automatically collect and store about your visit(s) includes:

o The Internet domain and IP address from which you access the City’s website(s) during your visit (e.g., yournetworkprovider.com)

o The type of browser and operating system used to access the City’s website(s) during your visit (e.g., IE or FireFox, and MS Windows or Linux)

o The date, time, and duration of your visit to the City’s website(s)

o The pages visited during your visit to the City’s website(s)

o If you accessed the City’s website(s) from another site, the address of that website

Cookies
Cookies or other similar technology may transfer information from the City of Lowell’s website(s) to your hard disk for record-keeping purposes. These technologies are used to improve your Internet experience by storing information about your preferences on a particular site; the use of these technologies is considered industry standard. Most browsers accept cookies by default, and can be set to refuse them; if you choose to refuse them, you may not be able to take full advantage of the City of Lowell’s website(s).

Online Submissions
When completing and submitting an online form, survey, or email, you may choose to provide the City of Lowell with personal information. The City of Lowell may use this information in response or follow up to your request, question, concern, or recommendation.

Online Commerce
In order to engage in certain on-line transactions and provide electronic commerce capabilities (e.g., online payment of bills), you will be required to register with certain personally identifiable information. Your name, address and payment information (if applicable) that you submit may be collected, processed, and disclosed in order to complete an online transaction and/or for record-keeping for such activities as billing, permits, licenses, and other business related purposes. All such financial transactions conducted via the City of Lowell’s website(s) or authorized third parties will be securely conducted via HTTPS.

Information We Share

The City of Lowell does not use its website(s) to collect personal information or create individual profiles with the information provided by users of its website(s), nor does it give such personal information to third parties or private organizations, except where necessary to enable us to respond to your online form submissions, for the completion of online transactions, or as necessary, relevant, or material to a criminal investigation.

The City of Lowell does not collect information for commercial marketing from its website(s), will not share any user information with commercial marketing organizations, nor will it send you unsolicited email regarding any commercial offer(s) or advertisements at any time.

Notwithstanding the above provisions, information submitted to the City of Lowell’s website(s) may be subject to disclosure in response to judicial authorities, regulatory authorities, or law enforcement agencies in compliance with local and federal information discovery laws. All data submitted to the City of Lowell’s website(s) is discoverable via court order.

Information We Retain

All data submitted to the City of Lowell’s website(s) is eventually backed up, stored offsite, secured, and subject to retention based on local and federal laws.

Unless otherwise indicated via visual encryption technology indicators, (e.g., the gold padlock in the lower right hand corner of your screen) all data transmitted via the City of Lowell’s website(s) should be considered to be treated as visible and unsecured plain text. Users should take care to ensure visual encryption technology indicators are in use whenever conducting financial transactions. At no time should you conduct any financial transactions online without a visual encryption technology indicator visible to indicate that the use of encryption technology.

The City of Lowell takes all reasonable precautions to safeguard the confidentiality of data submitted to it, but shall nevertheless not be held liable for any injury caused by the disclosure of that information, whether caused by security breach, accident, inadvertence, or any other act resulting in disclosure. Please refer to the City of Lowell’s Terms of Use for additional details and disclaimers.