Introduction

www.sbcountyhr.org is the official Web site for the Santa Barbara County Human Resources Department (hereafter “HR Web”). We are committed to respecting your online privacy and recognize your need for appropriate protection and management of any personally identifiable information ("Personal Information") you share with us.

Personal Information

Personal Information means any information that may be used to identify an individual, including, but not limited to, a first and last name, a home or other physical address and an email address or other contact information, whether at work or at home.

In general, you can visit our Web pages without telling us who you are or revealing any Personal Information about yourself. If you use one of our online forms, it is up to you to provide us your personal information. If you don't provide your name or other required information, it may be impossible for us to refer, respond to, or investigate your complaint or request. When you do provide personally identifiable information, we use this information only to fulfill your immediate request. Some record may be kept of the transaction by the department contacted depending on the nature of the request. However, you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your personal information (including your account number and password, if applicable) and for restricting access to your computer, and you agree to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password.

Email

If you send us an email, you should know that email is not necessarily secure against interception. So, if your communication includes sensitive information like your bank account, charge card, social security number, medical information or anything you feel or have been advised is confidential, please contact your intended recipient by postal mail or telephone rather than email. In addition, email correspondence may be saved on the recipient's computer and backup media for an indefinite period of time. Your correspondence may also be forwarded to others in order to fulfill your request and thus may be held on their systems as well. Responses from us to your request will also persist on the sender's computer, those cc'd and most likely on your own computer after you read the message.

Cookies
A "cookie" is a small text file that may be used, for example, to collect information about Web site activity. Some cookies and other technologies may serve to recall Personal Information previously indicated by a Web user. Most browsers allow you to control cookies, including whether or not to accept them and how to remove them.

You may set most browsers to notify you if you receive a cookie, or you may choose to block cookies with your browser, but please note that if you choose to erase or block your cookies, some features of a site may not function properly if cookies are disabled. Most cookies have an expiration date.

IP Address
An Internet Protocol address is a set of numbers that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you log on to your Internet Service Provider or through your company's local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). Web servers, the powerful computers that provide web pages for viewing, automatically identify your computer by the IP address assigned to it during your session online.

We collect IP addresses for some purposes (for example, to build routine web traffic reports and to audit other features of our site). We do not link a user's IP address to a person's personal information (which we seldom have anyway) This means we will have a record of each user's session but the user remains anonymous to us.

We will use IP addresses to identify users of this site when we feel it is necessary to enforce compliance with our site's Terms of Use or to protect our service, site or other users from fraudulent or illegal behavior. Under some circumstances, we may make such information available to the affected Internet Service Provider in order for them to become aware of and control fraudulent or illegal behavior originating from their systems. We may also be required by legal process to release this IP address information (see above). Furthermore, under certain circumstances, IP address and/or domain names may be linked to personally identifiable information, when said information is stored in databases managed by Internet registrars or registries such as Network Solutions or ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers).

Your Consent
By using this Web site, you consent to the terms of our Online Privacy Policy and to HR Web’s processing of Personal Information for the purposes given above as well as those explained where we collect Personal Information on the Web. Should the Online Privacy Policy change, we intend to take every reasonable step to ensure that these changes are brought to your attention by posting all changes prominently on our web site for a reasonable period of time.