Privacy Policy

Last Updated 7/13/2018

Privacy Policy and Consent

The City of Georgetown Texas (City) respects the privacy and confidentiality of individuals who visit the City web site located at georgetown.org, its subdomains, and any domains operating under the authority of the City of Georgetown to represent City services. The City maintains this Privacy Policy to help you understand the commitment of the City to safeguard the privacy of the information you provide to the City’s website. This Privacy Policy outlines the information which the City will collect from you on its website and how the City will use that information. We may change this privacy policy from time to time, and changes will reflect first and foremost on this page. When changes are made, we will notify you by means of a prominent notice on the website.

Your Consent

By using the City website, you consent to the collection and use of the above-described information by the City and contracted Third Parties. If you do not agree with the terms and conditions stated in this Privacy Policy, please do not access or use the City website.

Collection of Your Personal Information by the City

The City’s mission is to provide you with personalized services and offerings designed to enhance your Georgetown experience. To do so effectively, City collects the following information:

(a) Personally Identifiable Information. The City, through the use of the City website, only collects personally identifiable information about you when you voluntarily provide such personally identifiable information to the City using the City website. If you do not wish your personally identifiable information to be collected, please do not submit it.

(b) Information from the use of “cookies”. The City website employs “cookie” technology. Cookies are small pieces of data stored in files on your computer allowing the City website to track your usage as you visit and revisit the City website. The use of cookies by the City website complies with generally accepted programming standards and practices. Please note that you can choose to block the use of cookies through settings in your web browser, but be advised that certain features of the City website may not work properly without them.

Use of Your Information by the City

It is the policy of the City not to sell, share, transfer, or rent to third parties any information you provide to the City, through the use of the City website, without your written consent except as required by operation of the law or in compliance with legal authorities; provided, however the City may share your personal information with certain third parties (“Target Third Parties”) without your written consent in order to further the purpose for which you voluntarily provide the City with the information. Additionally, the City engages third party information management service providers to help maintain efficient operations. Because such information management service providers may access our systems, such information management service providers may have access to your information. The City makes reasonable attempts to protect and preserve the ownership of information maintained about you within the City systems and databases by entering into agreements which retain ownership of the information and require these information management service providers to sign confidentiality agreements regarding the information found in our systems. The City cannot, however ensure the compliance with these agreements, nor the protection of such information in the hands of parties other than the City.

The City routinely collects, compiles, and reports statistics and information reflecting the use of the City website and information services in order to enhance membership services, advertising services, improve marketing and promotional efforts, analyze City website usage, improve the City website’s content and layout, carry out obligations from agreements between you and the City, notify you about changes of services, generate aggregate reports on trends, interests and behavior and enhance service offerings.

The City reserves the right to take any action the City deems prudent or necessary to safeguard the City website and your information in the City systems and databases from malicious or unwarranted attack by viruses, hackers, or other miscreants.

The City does not sell, lease, exchange or disclose your personally identifiable information with third-party, non-affiliated persons other than our sponsors or partners, unless it is required by law or disclosure is necessary to those persons that operate our websites, manage our contests/events and conduct prize fulfillment (“operational providers”). This protects the safety of our visitors, employees or property. The City also expects our operational providers to protect your privacy.

Website Links to Third Party Sites

We provide links on our Website to third party sites. These links are provided to visitors and users as a courtesy. We have no authority over, or take responsibility for the information practices of these third party sites and encourage you to review their privacy and information practices prior to disclosing your personal information.

Collection and Use of Your Information by Third Parties

The City partners with third parties that use technologies like cookies to gather information about you while visiting our site. Based on your browsing activities and interests, they are able to provide you specific advertising through internet-based ads.

Changing and Deleting Your Personal Information

You may request the City to change or delete your personal information in City systems and databases by submitting a detailed description of the desired action to the following e-mail address: webmaster@georgetown.org.

Please note that after the City processes a change or deletes your personal information from active City systems and databases, it is possible that non-active residual copies of your information may still exist in City systems and on archive or backup media.

EU Privacy Rights

Members of the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) have the right to ask us to halt or limit the processing of personal data, as defined by law, so as to not process personal data for marketing purposes. We will inform you always if we intend to use your personal data for such purposes, and moving forward you are always able to exercise your right to inform us at the City that you would like to erase all personal data from our website. To do so, please contact webmaster@georgetown.org with GDPR as the subject line.

International Transfers of Information

Information collected in the EEA or European Economic Area or European Union may be transferred, stored or processed by us and our service providers in the United States or countries where data laws may be different than the laws in your country. We will protect your data in accordance with our privacy policy wherever it is processed and the steps will be taken to remain in accordance with current laws.

We will apply your request in accordance with the appropriate country’s privacy rights laws. If you would like to exercise your rights to any of the following, please contact webmaster@georgetown.org to process your request:

• Right of access: you have the right to access the data you have provided to us.
• Right of erasure: you have the right to the erasure of personal data we have about you.
• Right to withdraw consent: you have the right to refuse to provide or withdraw consent of collection of data at any time.
• Right to object to processing: you have the right to request that we halt processing of your data and halt sending marketing and promotional communications.
• Right to rectification: you have the right to require us to correct any personal data collected.

Electronic Newsletters

We offer free, electronic newsletters, updates and e-mail reminders as a service to our registrants, based upon your voluntary subscription. You will only receive an electronic newsletter if you have requested it (opted-in). We do not share our mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers or partners unless it is noted upon sign up.

SMS Notifications

The City of Georgetown uses SMS/Text services to notify customers of events such as utility outages, public health and safety concerns, boil water notices, or energy alerts.  These services use the phone number associated with your utility account service address or one provided to us during your registration with the service.

Should you wish to unregister from these services, please text STOP or QUIT to the number you received the original welcome message from, or simply reply to the original message.

If you wish to receive more information about these services, please text HELP to the number you received the original welcome message from, or simply reply to the original message.

We anticipate that you should not receive more than 10 messages/month from these services.

Your carrier’s message and data rates may apply.

For more specific information regarding the SMS Utility Notification Service please refer to the FAQ section found on this page.

General Privacy Guidelines

We use your personal information to provide you with the features, services, or goods you request. We also use your personal information to notify you about updates, new features, programming and activities that may be of interest. (We explain below in the next section what our policy is for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information to advertisers.)

We may also use your information for hiring, operational and business purposes, or to find out how we can improve our website via surveys or online tracking mechanisms. We use aggregate personal information to help us evaluate and modify existing services and features. We also use your personal information to develop new services and features that may be of interest to you.

We will not sell, exchange, rent, lease or otherwise disclose your personal information to other third party marketers or any such persons that are not associated with Georgetown City as advertisers unless it is necessary to: 1) conform to regulatory and legal requirements or to comply with legal process; 2) to protect the safety and security of our users, employees, or property; 3) to defend the rights of the City website; or 4) to enforce the Terms of Use Agreement.

Non-personal data we collect from you, or data not associated or linked to you or your personal data include: log data, IP address, pixel tags, Google Analytics and Flash LSOs. We reserve the right to collect personal information using any new technology yet to be developed and to use such technology to provide new services and features to you, as well as for marketing and promotional purposes. Specific information regarding your choice to Opt-in or to Opt-out to such use, or for sharing your personal information with advertisers, will be provided once the new technology, service, or feature is introduced.

Website Collection, Use, and Disclosure of Personal Information

Generally, you may browse this website without providing any personal information. For certain activities (such as event vendor applications, contest applications, surveys, event alerts, or volunteer registrations) the personal information you voluntarily provide may include your first/middle and last name, home address, email address, telephone number, and mobile phone/text messaging device number, and gender, personal preferences, depending on the activity.

Unless stated otherwise, we do not request contact information for a mobile phone, text messaging or any wireless device that includes a domain name address (such as “.net” or “.com”) as part of the contact information. Federal law prohibits the sending of commercial email messages directly to a wireless device that uses a domain name, unless you have first given your affirmative consent. We may inadvertently collect a wireless device number that includes a domain name when you send us an inquiry or register for a contest or membership club. However, we will not knowingly use that contact information for sending commercial email. We reserve the right to respond to user inquiries or requests sent via a wireless device that uses a domain name as such messages are not deemed to be commercial email and therefore, are not regulated by Federal law. However, when “computer to phone” commercial emails are prohibited by law, we may reject your wireless device contact information when such information is submitted for certain Site features or services. We will attempt to notify you if we will need new contact information.

For specific purposes (such as the purchase of goods and services) we may request a type of confidential personally identifiable information which shall be called “Sensitive Personal Information” and is defined as any individual’s: (1) social security number; (2) driver’s license number or state identification card number; or (3) account number, credit or debit card number, in combination with any required security code, access code or password that would permit access to an individual’s financial account. This Sensitive Personal Information will only be used to implement the specific activity or event it was submitted for. We will not share your Sensitive Personal Information with Advertisers or Partners.

However, more general Personal Information will be used to implement the specific activity or event and will also be used for the marketing of additional events, services and merchandising for this website.

Refund Policy

All payments and sales are final, unless the City has made an error in the transaction; the City will process the refund within 20 business days from the date of notification of the erroneous transaction.

Cookies and Image Tags

The use of cookies is an industry standard and they are currently used on most websites, including this website. Cookies are a small text file containing a unique identification number that is transferred from a website to the hard drive of a user’s computer so that the website administrator or a third party operational service provider may identify the computer and passively track the user’s activities on the website. Image tags work in conjunction with cookies and are small image files that may be located on select pages of our website, or with-in web-based email newsletters that we may send. (Image tags are also called web beacons, web bugs, clear GIFs or single-pixel GIFs.) Tracking is important because we can better understand what parts of our website are used the most, when to launch new services and how to enhance current offerings. We may share the information we receive from cookies and image tags with third-parties and our Advertisers in aggregate form, which means that such information does not contain specific personal information about any one visitor.

In short, cookies and image tags collect a user’s Internet protocols and server information. Such data files allow our website to remember your web browser when you visit our website and are necessary tools for quick and efficient access to membership clubs, awards programs and contests. A cookie will not allow the site to learn any personal information (such as your real name and email address) or sensitive personal information that you have not otherwise disclosed. Cookies and image tags allow the website to remember important information that will make browsing easier for you to use and helpful in our administration of various activities. We do not use cookies or image tags to collect other personal information or sensitive personal information unless you give us permission to do so.

You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie or image tag is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all such devices. This is done through your browser. If you turn cookies off, you may not have access to many features at our Site that make your Internet experience more efficient and enjoyable – like the features mentioned above – and some of our other services will not function properly.

Children’s Privacy Policy

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”) applies only to websites of a commercial nature, and while Georgetown City is a nonprofit organization, it considers COPPA to provide sound advice for any website that is intended for use by children. For this reason, Georgetown City does not knowingly collect or solicit any personally identifiable information from children under 13 years of age without verifiable parental consent.

In the event that we receive actual knowledge that we have collected such personal information without the requisite and verifiable parental consent, we will delete that information from our database as quickly as is practicable. With respect to any form interface that appears on a webpage at our website, no information will be knowingly collected from any user under the age of 13. For more information about COPPA, please see the Federal Trade Commission’s website: http://www.ftc.gov/.

Providing personal information is never a prerequisite for accessing the basic content or resources on this website.

Monitoring and Use of Aggregate Personal Information

We reserve the right to monitor and edit personal information about our users, including information about the use of website activities and services, the contents of users’ email and messages for internal purposes, and when necessary, to disclose to law enforcement personnel, and/or the employer and/or Internet Service Provider of a user that is not in compliance with the Terms of Use Agreement or Privacy Policy. We will take such measures if we believe it is necessary to protect the security, integrity, and operations of this website. Without disclosure of personal information about individual users, we may provide aggregate statistics about our users, traffic patterns and related website information to Advertisers, reputable third party vendors or marketing companies.

This site licenses third party ad-server software to provide banner advertising on the website. We will place cookies on your computer that collect personal information, monitor your website or Internet usage via this software and such information will be collected, used, and stored in the same manner that other personal information is collected on this Site. The third party software licensor does not have access to your personal information.

We may share aggregated data and log data with third parties for industry analysis, demographic profiling or other purposes.

Security

City maintains industry standard encryption technologies to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of the personal information that you provide through the website. Please keep in mind, however, that no data transmission over the Internet or any wireless network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit using our website, and therefore, it is important to remember that you transmit such information at your own risk. Georgetown City does not assume responsibility for use or disclosure of your information that are the result of unauthorized or illegal access to our systems or to those of our vendors or partners.

CONTACTING US

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or any of the City’s use of your information, please contact the Georgetown City at the following e-mail address: webmaster@georgetown.org.