Privacy and Security Notice
Thank you for visiting the Pinellas County website and reviewing our Privacy Policy. Pinellas County provides its website for your convenience. By using the information, services and products available through this website, You agree to be bound by all of Pinellas County terms and conditions of use as set forth herein.
This policy describes the collection, use and disclosure of Your information when You use the Pinellas County Websites and tells You about Your privacy rights and how the law protects You. We use Your Personal data to provide services and improve the Websites.
The terms and conditions set forth in this Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time without direct notice to you. It is your responsibility to review and be aware of any posted notice from the County concerning changes to this policy. Your continued use of this service will indicate your agreement to any such change.
Interpretation
The words of which the initial letter is capitalized have meanings defined under the following conditions. The following definitions shall have the same meaning regardless of whether they appear in singular or in plural.
Definitions
For the purposes of this Privacy Policy:
- Account means a unique account created for You to access our Service or parts of our Service.
- Pinellas County (referred to as either “the County”, “We”, “Us” or “Our” in this Policy) refers to Pinellas County Government, 315 Court Street Clearwater, FL 33756.
- Cookies are small files that are placed on Your computer, mobile device or any other device by a website, containing the details of Your browsing history on that website among its many uses.
- Country refers to the United States
- Device means any device that can access the Service such as a computer, a cellphone or a digital tablet.
- Personal Data is any information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual.
- Service refers to the Websites.
- Service Provider means any natural or legal person who processes the data on behalf of the County. It refers to third-party companies or individuals employed by the County to facilitate the Service, to provide the Service on behalf of the County, to perform services related to the Service or to assist the County in analyzing how the Service is used.
- State refers to Florida.
- Third Parties means any company and software we use to provide the Service.
- Usage Data refers to data collected automatically, either generated by the use of the Service or from the Service infrastructure itself (for example, the duration of a page visit).
- Websites refers to the Pinellas County Government website, accessible from https://pinellas.gov, and any other websites hosted by the County.
- You means the individual accessing or using the Service, or the company, or other legal entity on behalf of which such individual is accessing or using the Service, as applicable.
Collecting and Using Your Personal Information
Personal Information
While using Our Websites, the County may ask You to provide certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify You. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to:
- Email address
- First name and last name
- Phone number
- Address, City, State, ZIP code,
- Usage Data
If you choose to provide personal information through forms on Our Websites, that information is used to respond to you and help us provide the information you have requested. We may share this information with another government agency if your inquiry relates to that agency. Your information may be disclosed if required under Public Records law. (Ihttps://pinellas.gov/public-records/ )
Under Florida law, e-mail addresses are public records. If You do not want Your e-mail address released in response to a public records request, do not send e-mails to this entity or provide your email address in an online form. Instead, contact this office by phone or in writing.
Usage Data
Usage Data is collected automatically when anyone uses the Websites.
Usage Data may include information such as Your Device’s Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Websites that You visit, the time and date of Your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
When You access the Websites by or through a mobile device, We may collect certain information automatically, including, but not limited to, the type of mobile device You use, Your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of Your mobile device, Your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser You use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
We may also collect information that Your browser sends whenever You visit our Websites or when You access the Websites by or through a mobile device.
Analytics
We use third-party service providers to monitor and analyze the use of our Websites, including but not limited to Google Analytics, HotJar, and Siteimprove.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Websites. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.
You can opt-out of having your activity on the Service made available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.
For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy.
Hotjar
We use a technology service called Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to improve the Websites. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on Your behavior and device. This includes Your device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display Our Websites. Hotjar stores this information on Our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on Our behalf.
At times, to better understand how users interact with specific pages on our Websites, we may use HotJar to record Your mouse movement and places where You click on a webpage. These recordings are not personally identifiable. They are used to create “heatmaps” that We use to identify what users view and select. This helps Us improve Our Websites.
For more information on the privacy practices of HotJar, please visit the Hotjar web page: https://hotjar.com
Siteimprove
We use an analytics and quality assurance platform called Siteimprove that tracks and reports accessibility, grammar, and user experience issues for our Websites. Siteimprove uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on Your behavior and device. This includes Your device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display Our Websites. Siteimprove stores this information on Our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Siteimprove is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on Our behalf.
For more information on the privacy practices of Siteimprove, please visit the Siteimprove web page: https://www.siteimprove.com/privacy/
Third-Party Access to Website Data
The above and other Third Parties may collect or receive information about your use of the Pinellas County website including through the use of Cookies, Web Beacons and other technologies.
Tracking Technologies and Cookies
We use Cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on Our Websites and store certain information. Tracking technologies used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze Our Service. The technologies We use may include:
- Cookies or Browser Cookies. A cookie is a small file placed on Your Device. You can instruct Your browser to refuse all Cookies or to indicate when a Cookie is being sent; however, if You do not accept Cookies, You may not be able to use some parts of our Websites. Unless you have adjusted Your browser setting so that it will refuse Cookies, our Websites may use Cookies.
- Web Beacons. Certain sections of our Websites and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the County, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of a certain section and verifying system and server integrity).
Use of Your Personal Data
If you provide your personal information, the County may use your Personal Data for the following purposes:
- To improve our Websites, including to monitor the usage of our Websites.
- To manage Your Account: to manage Your registration as a user of the Websites. The Personal Data You provide can give You access to different functionalities of the Websites that are available to You as a registered user.
- To contact You: To contact You by email, telephone calls, SMS, or other equivalent forms of electronic communication, such as a mobile application’s push notifications regarding updates or informative communications related to the functionalities, products or contracted services, including the security updates, when necessary or reasonable for their implementation.
- To manage Your requests: To attend and manage Your requests to Us.
- For other purposes: We may use Your information for other purposes, such as data analysis, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our educational campaigns and to evaluate and improve our Websites and your experience.
Retention of Your Personal Data
The County will retain Your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We will retain and use Your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.
The County will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of Our Websites, or We are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods.
Transfer of Your Personal Data
Your information, including Personal Data, is processed at the County’s operating offices and in any other places where the parties involved in the processing are located. It means that this information may be transferred to and maintained on computers located outside of Your state, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ than those from Your jurisdiction. Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by Your submission of such information represents Your agreement to that transfer.
The County will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that Your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of Your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of Your data and other personal information.
Disclosure of Your Personal Data
The County does not disclose any personally identifiable information collected online unless you have given us permission, or the information is requested to be disclosed and is public information under the State of Florida statutes or other applicable laws.
Please note that chapter 119, Florida Statutes, provides a right of access to the records of the state and local governments as well as to private entities acting on their behalf. In the absence of a statutory exemption, this right of access applies to all materials made or received by an agency in connection with the transaction of official business which are used to perpetuate, communicate or formalize knowledge. Therefore, information submitted to or collected by the County from the use of its websites may be examined and inspected upon request if that information is a public record and not otherwise protected from being disclosed.
Site Security
For security purposes, We use commercial software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information or otherwise cause damage.
Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, no other attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Raw data logs are used for no other purposes and are scheduled for regular destruction in accordance with State guidelines for records management and retention.
Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change 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.
Links to Other Websites
The website has links to many other governmental agencies. In some instances we link to private organizations. Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy policy of the new site.
Also refer to Our Liability Disclaimer and User Agreement.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We will let You know via a prominent notice on Our Website prior to the change becoming effective and update the “Last updated” date at the top of this Privacy Policy.
Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, contact us at 727-464-4600.
E-mail addresses are public records under Florida law and are not exempt from public records requirements. If you do not want your e-mail address to be subject to being released pursuant to a public records request, do not send electronic mail to this entity. Instead, contact this office by telephone or in writing, via the United States Postal Service.