Privacy Policy

Protecting your privacy is very important to us. Our website links to other National Institutes of Health (NIH) sites, federal agency sites, and private organizations. Once you leave the primary IDC site, you are subject to the privacy policy for the site(s) you are visiting. We collect some data about your visit to our website to help us better understand how the public uses the site and how to make it more helpful. We collect information from visitors who read, browse, and/or download information from our website. We never collect information for commercial marketing or any purpose unrelated to the IDC mission and goals.

Types of Information Collected

When you browse through our website, certain information about your visit can be collected. We automatically collect and store the following types of information about your visit:

  • Domain from which you access the Internet
  • IP address (an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to a computer when surfing the Web)
  • Operating system and information about the browser used when visiting the site
  • Date and time of your visit
  • Pages you visited
  • Address of the website that connected you to the IDC site (such as google.com or bing.com)
  • Information about which datasets are visited, linked to the IP address used to visit it

We use this information to measure the number of visitors to our site and its various sections and datasets to help make our site more useful to visitors.

When you download IDC-maintained data, you are interacting with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and/or Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud storage buckets. While sign-in is not required to download data from those public buckets, data may be collected if you are signed in. On AWS, your email ID may be logged when downloading. On GCP, if you use the optional “requester pays”, your billing project ID will be logged when downloading.

How IDC Collects Information

IDC uses Google Analytics and Google Cloud Platform StackDriver Logging to collect the information in the Types of Information Collected section above. Google Analytics and StackDriver gather information automatically and continuously. No Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is collected by these two systems. IDC staff conducts analyses and reports on the aggregated data, and those reports are only available to the NCI and NIH.

IDC retains the data from Google Analytics and StackDriver as long as needed to support the mission of the IDC website and the NCI.

How IDC Uses Cookies

The Office of Management and Budget Memo M-10-22, Guidance for Online Use of Web Measurement and Customization Technologies (link is external) allows Federal agencies to use session and persistent cookies.

When you visit any website, its server may generate a piece of text known as a "cookie" to place on your computer. The cookie allows the server to "remember" specific information about your visit while you are connected.

The cookie makes it easier for you to use the dynamic features of web pages. Cookies from IDC pages only collect information about your browser’s visit to the site; they do not collect personal information about you.

There are two types of cookies: single-session (temporary) and multi-session (persistent). Session cookies last only as long as your web browser is open. Once you close your browser, the cookie disappears. Persistent cookies are stored on your computer for longer periods.

Session Cookies

IDC uses session cookies for technical purposes, such as to enable better navigation through our site. These cookies let our server know that you are continuing a visit to our site. The OMB Memo 10-22 Guidance defines our use of session cookies as "Usage Tier 1 — Single Session.” The policy says, "This tier encompasses any use of single session web measurement and customization technologies."

Persistent Cookies

IDC uses persistent cookies to enable Google Analytics to differentiate between new and returning IDC visitors. Persistent cookies remain on your computer between visits to IDC until they expire. The OMB Memo 10-22 Guidance defines our use of persistent cookies as "Usage Tier 2 — Multi-session without Personally Identifiable Information (PII).” The policy says, "This tier encompasses any use of multi-session web measurement and customization technologies when no PII is collected."

Data Safeguarding and Privacy

IDC uses web measurement and customization technologies to help our websites function better for visitors and to better understand how the public uses the online resources we provide. All uses of web-based technologies comply with existing policies with respect to privacy and data safeguarding standards.

Data Retention and Access Limits

IDC will retain data collected long enough to achieve the specified objective for which they were collected. The data generated from these activities falls under the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) General Records Schedule (GRS) 20-item IC 'Electronic Records,' and will be handled per the requirements of that schedule (link is external).