The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science site is managed
by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Direct administration
of the computer systems is handled by the National Ocean Service,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Information presented
on these pages is considered public information and may be distributed
or copied. Use of appropriate photo and image credits is requested.
Agency seals and logos cannot be used without the written permission
of the agency.
Visitor information collected by the Web servers is necessary in
order to share their contents with visitors. (View visitiors rights
under the Privacy
Act). The technical information collected (see
example below) identifies what part of the Web site a visiting
computer wishes to reach, and where to send the requested information
once it is found. For site management, this technical information
is also used for statistical analysis. Summary statistics are used
for such purposes as assessing what information is of most and least
interest, identifying usage trends over time, determining technical
design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem
areas. This Web site collects no personally identifiable visitor
information unless the visitor chooses to provide it.
Any additional visitor information collected on the site is for
a specific purpose identified on the site. Submitting voluntary
information constitutes visitor consent to the use of the information
for the stated purpose.
Electronic mail sent to addresses listed on this Web site is treated
no differently than any other electronic mail. All electronic mail
transactions are handled by electronic mail servers, and do not
pass through this Web site, nor are they monitored or recorded by
this site in any way.
This Web site does not use persistent tracking technologies
including Web "cookies."
For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains
available to all users, this government computer system employs
hardware and software to monitor network traffic and to identify
unauthorized attempts to add or alter information, or otherwise
cause damage or interfere with information delivery. Except for
computer security or law enforcement investigations, no attempt
is made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Raw
data logs may be stored indefinitely for use in statistical analysis
or to protect the security and integrity of the computer system.
Unauthorized attempts to add information or alter information on
this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under
the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information
Infrastructure Protection Act.
Please note that other National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Web sites may have different information collection practices. If
interested, please consult their site-specific privacy statements
for details on such policies.
If you have any questions or comments about the information presented
here, please forward them to nccos.webmaster@noaa.gov.
Example of information collected by this
Web site
Web servers keep a record of their activity in a log file. Every
time a visiting computer requests a file from the Web server, a
log entry is recorded. A typical log file entry for the National
Centers for Coastal Ocean Web site looks like this:
10/04/00 13:19:18 OK 200 somemachine.somenetwork.com
Mozilla/4.75 (Macintosh; U; PPC) http://othermachine.othernetwork.com/neatsites.html
"oceanservice.noaa.gov" :welcome.html 15208
What this entry means:
-
10/04/00 13:19:18 -- Date and time of the request (24-hour
clock).
-
OK 200 -- Status code of the request. "OK"
and a status code of "200" are equivalent; they mean
the requested file was successfully found and delivered to the
requesting (visitor's) computer.
-
somemachine.somenetwork.com -- Internet address (or
IP address, in the form of 123.123.123.123) of the requesting
computer. The last part of the address, .com, indicates the
requesting computer is on a commercial network. Other commonly
seen addresses end in .mil (U.S. military), .net (a different
category of commercial network), .org (non-profit organization),
.gov (U.S. government agencies, state and Federal), etc. Depending
on how the requesting computer is connected to the Internet,
this may not identify a specific computer.
-
Mozilla/4.75 (Macintosh; U; PPC) -- Type of browser
used by the requesting computer.
-
http://othermachine.othernetwork.com/neatsites.html
-- The Internet address of the last site visited by the requesting
computer, useful in discovering how visitors found this Web
site.
-
"oceanservice.noaa.gov" -- The Internet address
of this Web site. As it is possible to operate several Web sites
on a single computer, the Web server uses this information to
determine which Web site should handle the request.
-
:welcome.html -- The name of the file requested by the
visiting computer.
-
15208 -- Size of the requested file, in bytes.
|