Website Privacy Policy

The website for the City of Chattanooga ("City"), chattanooga.gov, is designed to encourage user participation in City government, to deliver electronic services to the public, and to help create a better Chattanooga for all. Toward that end, the City recognizes the importance of protecting the privacy of this website's users.

Personal/confidential information

The City does not use its website to collect personal information for any purpose other than to respond to a user's request, or feedback, or to complete an online transaction, as more fully described below. The City does not use information collected through its website, including mobile phone numbers, for commercial and/or marketing purposes and will not send you unsolicited emails or text messages for commercial offers or advertisements.

The City of Chattanooga does not create individual profiles with the information provided by users of this site, nor does it give such personal information to third parties or private organizations.

Any information collected by chattanooga.gov from children ages thirteen (13) and under is subject to the same guidelines of the City's general privacy policy.

Collection of limited information

The only information that the City automatically collects and stores about your visit to our website is the following:

1. The Fully Qualified Domain Name ("Domain Name") of your Internet Service Provider ("ISP") and/or your computer, if your computer has a Domain Name specifically assigned to it;
2. Your IP Address (the number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web) from which you access our website;
3. Your Browser Type (for example, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera);
4. Your Operating System you use to access our site (for example, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Macintosh OS, Linux);
5. The Date and Time you accessed our site;
6. The Pages you visited; and
7. The Uniform Resource Locator ("URL") of the page from which you started (for example, google.com) that linked you to our website, if you did not access our page by typing in our URL.

Our policy on "cookies"

A cookie is a small data file that certain websites write to your hard drive when you visit them. A cookie file can contain information such as a session ID that the site uses to track the pages you have visited. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information that you supply.

Some parts of the City's website use cookies to track user sessions. We do this to determine if an individual has left the site and needs to log in again. The passive cookies used on this site do not remember you each time you visit the site.

If you prefer not to receive cookies while browsing our website, you can set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies and refuse the cookie when your browser alerts you to its presence. You also can refuse all cookies by turning them off in your browser, although you may not be able to take full advantage of this website if you do so. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use or navigate through many parts of our website. However, cookies must be accepted to access certain web pages that require a login and password.

Notwithstanding the above provisions of this section, information submitted to the City of Chattanooga's website may be subject to disclosure to a third party as provided by law.

Hosting of some content by outside parties

Some content on portions of the City’s website reside on servers that are operated by third party vendors. These third party vendors have direct control of what information is automatically collected, whether cookies are used, and how information that is voluntarily provided is used.,Thus, the City cannot represent that the third party vendors will abide by this privacy policy. The City uses the following applications that are currently hosted by third party vendors:

• FOIAView
• Cityworks
• Google
• Brazos
• iGov
• FIS

Notwithstanding the foregoing language regarding third party vendors, the City does not share text messaging originator opt-in data and consent that it receives from the public with any third parties.

Security

Unless a particular page on this website indicates that encryption technology is being used, the user should not assume that information uploaded through that Web page to the City of Chattanooga's Web server will be treated as confidential. If a user submits information to the server through a page containing visible indicators of active encryption technology, the City will take all reasonable precautions to safeguard the confidentiality of such information to the extent permitted by law. Nevertheless, the City shall not be liable for any injury caused by the disclosure of that information, whether caused by a security breach, accident, inadvertence, or any other act resulting in disclosure.