Tuesday Mar 09, 2010

Privacy Policy All of us at NIC Systems Group, Inc. (hereinafter “NIC”) are concerned about your privacy. We have a corporate policy of maintaining the privacy of information we obtain in the normal course of providing our services, and we remain sensitive to privacy issues. PRIVACY POLICY THE INFORMATION WE OBTAIN AND HOW WE USE IT The information obtained from you is necessary for us to provide services and design new services for your future use. Your name, address, services you buy from us, etc. is obtained so we may properly provide and bill for those services. When you call us, our representatives pull up account records and may refer to your bill, your usage patterns, and other information we have in order to answer your questions or recommend how we can best serve you. We may also use the information in our records to protect you, your employees or property such as for the investigation of fraud, harassment or other types of unlawful service activities involving third parties or other users we do business with. In some cases, it may be necessary to provide this information to the government or third parties who make a lawful demand for it. We share information within our organization to enable us to better understand your product and service needs, and to learn how to best design, develop, and package products and services to meet those needs. ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION We want the information we obtain and use about you to be accurate. If your service information or your personal contact information changes or you see an inaccuracy on your bill or other correspondence, please let us know so we can correct it. Ensuring we have current and accurate information is your responsibility and obligation under any NIC Agreement, Terms of Service, and Acceptable Use Policy. SECURITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY We have information systems that collect and store your information in addition to systems that store our own business records. These systems have different types of security as appropriate for the information stored. NIC requires employees to keep your information confidential and we hold them accountable for their actions. DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION As a general rule, NIC does not release account information to unaffiliated third parties without your permission unless we have a business relationship with those companies where the disclosure is appropriate, such as the hiring of outside companies as contractors or agents, or our engagement in a joint venture or partnership with another company. Upon occasion, NIC may decide to stop providing a service or may decide to sell or transfer parts of our business to unaffiliated companies. When this happens, we may provide confidential customer information to these companies so they can offer you the same or similar services. In all of these situations, we provide information to these other companies only as needed to accomplish our business objectives and the companies are bound by requirements to keep NIC customers' information confidential. EXCEPTIONS REGARDING THE DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION We may provide some account information to a collection agency if you do not pay your bill, however, we restrict the use of that information solely for that specific collection activity. Additionally, we may provide information, upon request, to regulatory or administrative agencies so they can accomplish their regulatory tasks such as responding to a customer complaint. Other disclosures will be driven by legal requirements imposed on NIC such as a subpoena, court order or other similar demand associated with either criminal or civil proceedings. AUTHORIZED RELEASE OF INFORMATION If you tell us in writing to release your account information to someone, we will honor your request and provide that information. Your account information is released to other companies when you give us your permission or when they advise us AND can prove to us they have your approval to access the information. This most often occurs with respect to a sale of service they want to make or have made to you. Unless we are advised that permission from you has been granted, we do not release the information. YOUR CONTROL OVER THE DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION We may, from time to time, provide you with information about new products, services or special promotions via email. We maintain an internal "Do Not Call" list in line with federal law. If you inform us in writing not to contact you, you will not be contacted regarding any commercial solicitation. Note however, that we reserve the right in our sole discretion to email you regarding viruses, changes to your service, technical bulletins, or other types of product advisories. PRIVACY OVER THE INTERNET NIC understands you may have special privacy concerns that could arise around information transmitted or collected over the Internet or through web sites. Below we describe our practices to address those concerns. COOKIES NIC websites may use "cookies" to improve the level of service and speed up the delivery of information to our visitors. They ARE NOT DANGEROUS. Cookies are lines of text that are transmitted to your Web browser when you click on a website. They provide a way for a server to recall a previous request or registration, or to keep track of a transaction in process, so information you have entered does not have to be repeated. Your browser stores the information on your hard drive and when you return to that site later, the cookie is transmitted back only to the server that originally sent it to you. You can configure your browser to alert you when a site is attempting to send you a cookie and at that time you will have the option of accepting or refusing it. You can check your hard drive for cookie files in a "cookies" folder for Internet Explorer, a "cookies.txt" file for Netscape, and under "magic cookies" on a Macintosh. HOW GENERIC INFORMATION COLLECTED ONLINE IS USED To gauge the effectiveness of our websites, we may, from time to time, collect some generic, non-identifiable information about our visitors. Our web servers automatically recognize a visitor's Internet Service Provider, the IP address, the domain name, the type of browser, and the operating system. Additionally, we may track which pages are viewed on our websites, the web page used to link to our websites, how much time a visitor spends on each page and other information related to the operation and interaction of NIC websites. This information DOES NOT reveal a visitor's identity. We aggregate this information and use it to evaluate and improve our websites. HOW IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION COLLECTED ONLINE IS USED You may, at your sole discretion, have the option of providing specific information about yourself to NIC. This can happen in a number of ways, including but not limited to ordering a service from us, sending us email, registering to receive news or information, applying for a job, or entering a contest. When you supply information about yourself for a specific purpose, NIC uses the information for that specific purpose. Sometimes NIC co-sponsors events with other companies, such as contests or features. If you provide specific information it most likely will be used by both NIC and the co-sponsor. You may choose to provide us with specific information to customize a personal home page. We may analyze this information to better understand and serve our customers, but we do not share that information with anyone outside of NIC. We do not sell or disclose your specific information obtained on-line to non-NIC entities except as described herein. The NIC websites may contain links to other sites. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices employed by other websites, as they may have different privacy policies or no policy at all. You should review the privacy policies of any website before providing personal information. NIC may place banner ads on other websites. When we do this, we collect non-specific information through the aid of third parties with whom we contract, using the most current browsing technology. This activity allows us to recognize a browser's cookie when a browser visits the site and helps us target our Internet advertisements. The information collected is anonymous and does not contain any information that would personally identify you. The information is shared among our contracting agents and our business operations in order to assess the results of a promotion or event. SECURITY OF YOUR INFORMATION NIC has databases and systems that are maintained to reasonably secure all of NIC's commercial information, including information about you. All credit card and bank account information you submit to NIC, and the entire credit card number and/or bank information we submit to the appropriate financial institution during processing is encrypted through Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software. CHILDREN NIC does not currently target its services, nor does NIC intend to collect any information from anyone under eighteen (18) years of age. However, some of our websites do contain links to content providers that collect such information. These companies are expected to comply with all laws pertaining to the collection of information from children. Because the Internet offers open access to a wide range of information, it is important that parents supervise and prevent access to inappropriate content, email or chat sessions. To improve the services NIC can offer you, NIC may opt to expand its capabilities for obtaining information about users in the future. NIC will update this privacy policy continually to ensure that you are aware of developments in this area.