Privacy Statement

This policy describes the privacy practices regarding information collected from visitors to VPR websites and VPR e-commerce systems. This policy does not apply whenever visitors leave VPR websites or VPR domains including other sites of Texas A&M University Departments or Texas A&M University System Parts.

Web site information

To help us ensure that this site is working and maintained properly, we do monitor certain telecommunications and automated information systems and also collect some information for analysis and statistical purposes. Sometimes this means we acquire, record and analyze portions of the data that is entered into, stored on, and/or transmitted through this site by you. This information is released only when required to help law enforcement investigations, legal proceedings or internal investigations of TAMU rule and regulation violations. The information may be used to track the electronic interactions back to the source computer(s) or account(s).

We do not use "cookies" to collect personal identifiable information about visitors. However we do use server logs to collect information concerning your Internet connection and general information about your visit to our Web site. We use log analysis tools to create summary statistics, which are used to determine technical design specifications, analyze possible trends, and identify system performance or problem areas.

When you conduct e-commerce with the VPR

The systems collect information about you that is necessary to appropriately process the payment for your order. Only personally-identifying information that you enter and submit is captured.

For your protection, no personal credit card information is stored on this server. A record of payment date, amount, method of payment, authorization code, trace number and customer number is recorded in the sales database for audit purposes. The payment information is secured by SSL (128-bit encryption if your browser supports it) between your browser and our server. It is then immediately forwarded with SSL to TexasOnline for immediate validation and processing. TexasOnline maintains their privacy policy regarding the personal information provided in the course of such a transaction. We use a signed digital certificate from Thawte to provide further assurance of our identity as you consider submitting your credit card information.

When you send us e-mail with a question or comment

Personal information that you provide in an e-mail or submitted comment will be used only to respond to the purpose of your request and to analyze possible trends. We may, however, redirect your e-mail to another person or department if they are in a better position to answer your question. The information will not be shared with anyone outside TAMU unless we are compelled by law to do so.

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your use of this Web site, please contact the Office of the Vice-President for Research via e-mail (webmaster@vpr.tamu.edu) or through the Postal Service at:

Office of the Vice President for Research
Texas A&M University
Attention: Webmaster
1112 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-1112
(979) 845-8585

COOKIES

A cookie file contains unique information that a Web site can use to track such things as passwords, pages you have visited, the date you last looked at a specific page, and to identify your session at a particular Web site.

SERVER LOG INFORMATION

The following information is collected from server logs for analysis:

User/client hostname - The hostname (or IP address if DNS is disabled) of the user/client requesting access
HTTP header, "user agent" - The user-agent information includes the type of browser, its version, and the operating system it is running on
HTTP header, "referrer" - The referrer specifies the page from which the client accessed the current page
System date - The date and time of the user/client request
Full request - The exact request the user/client made
Status - The status code the server returned to the user/client
Content length - The content length, in bytes, of the document sent to the user/client
Method - The request method used
Universal Resource Identifier (URI) - The location of a resource on the server
Query string of the URI - Anything after the question mark in a URI
Protocol - The transport protocol and version used