Privacy and Security Statement

Aggie Horticulture ("we", "us" or "our") respects your privacy. We are providing this privacy statement to ensure that we make every effort to respect your privacy and to inform you what information we collect, how we use it, how we protect it, when we can release it, and how you are entitled to access it. This privacy statement applies to the web sites we administer and the email you send us. Because we host several web sites that perform varied functions, some sites may adopt different privacy and security statements that reflect their functionality.

Information Collection, Use and Release

When you visit our web sites to read or download information, we do not collect personal information about you. In particular, we do not use "cookies" to collect or store personal information. However, we do collect and store technical information about your visit in server logs.

Some of our web sites also send general information about your visit to Google Analytics. We do not send personal information to Google Analytics.

We use personal information that you provide via email or through other online means to serve your needs, such as responding to an inquiry or other request for information. This may involve redirecting your inquiry or comment to another person or department better suited to meeting your needs.

We use information from server logs to evaluate accessibility or gauge the popularity of various features on our web sites. We also use that information for general reporting and management functions. Specifically, we use log analysis tools to generate statistics, determine technical design specifications, and identify system performance issues.

Occasionally, we acquire, record, and analyze portions of the data that you enter, store, or transmit through our web sites or email you send us. We release this information - only when legally required - to help law enforcement investigations, legal proceedings, or internal investigations of Texas A&M University rule and regulation violations. These groups would use the information to track the electronic interactions back to the source computer(s) or account(s).

Except for education records governed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), all information collected from our web sites, including server logs, and information collected from web forms, or email you send to us, may be subject to the Texas Public Information Act. This means that while we do not actively share information, in some cases we may be compelled by law to release this information.

Cookies

A cookie file contains unique information that a web site can use to store such things as passwords, or pages you have visited, or the date you last looked at a specific page. Cookies can also identify your server session at a particular web site. We do not use cookies to collect or store personal information.

Sessions

A server session is like a cookie that is stored on a web server. It can store information such as what web pages you visited, when you visited a web page, or personal information that you supply or information the web page retrieves for you. Occasionally, we use server sessions to store information about your session. For example, we may require you to login to a web site and store your username; distinguishing you from other people using the site.

Server Logs

We store the following information in our server logs:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics stores the following information on their web site:

Google Analytics shares information with Google. Please read Google's Privacy Policy for more information.

Information Security

We employ extensive security measures consistent with the Texas Administrative Code (TAC) "Information Security Standards" and Texas A&M System Rules and Standard Administrative Procedures to protect against unauthorized access, disclosure, modification, or destruction of information under our control, as well as the loss, misuse, or alteration of our web sites and/or associated electronic information resources. The information resources that support our web sites undergo an annual information security risk assessment via the Information Security Awareness Assessment and Compliance (ISAAC) system. The ISAAC system assesses the security posture of information systems and measures compliance with information security standards.

Information Access

The Texas Public Information Act, with a few exceptions, gives you the right to be informed about the information our web sites collect about you. It also gives you the right to request a copy of that information, and to have the university correct any of that information. You may request to receive and review any of this information, or request corrections to it, by contacting the TAMU Public Information Officer or the TAMU Office of Open Records, 1181 TAMU, College Station, Texas, 77843-1181, at 979-862-7777.

Questions

If you have any questions about this privacy and security statement, the practices of our web sites, or your use of our web sites, please call or send email to the Web Administrator or by postal mail to:

Department of Horticultural Sciences
ATTN: Web Administrator
2134 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-2134