We are committed to maintaining the privacy of your personal information and the security of our computer systems. With respect to the collection, use and disclosure of personally identifiable information (PII), we make every effort to ensure compliance with applicable Federal law, including, but not limited to, The Privacy Act of 1974, The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, and The Freedom of Information Act.
Generally, we do not collect or store any personally identifiable information (PII) when you visit our site. The information provided only aids in identifying and presenting available benefit(s) for which a visitor may be eligible; however, all information provided and generated will be lost after either closing your browser or 30 minutes of inactivity. In some cases, a pop-up on Benefits.gov may ask users to submit their email address to be contacted for research purposes, including but not limited to individual interviews, user testing, and focus groups. Participation is voluntary. PII collected through the pop-up is stored in a third-party site and is not stored by Benefits.gov.
If you visit our site to read or download information, we collect and store the following information:
If you identify yourself by sending an e-mail containing personal information:
To protect your privacy, we strongly discourage sending us personal information, as we are not able to respond to case specific inquiries. Information collected in this manner is used solely for responding to requests for information. We may forward your e-mail to other government employees who are better able to respond to you. If you wish to file a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), instructions are provided on the U.S. Department of Labor’s FOIA page.
If you link to other sites outside Benefits.gov:
Our website has many links to other sites. When you link to any of these sites, you are no longer on our site and are subject to the privacy policy of the new site.
Social Media and Third-Party Sites:
In addition to the Benefits.gov website, we use social media and third-party sites to provide Benefits.gov content in a different format that may be useful or interesting to you. When we use these sites, the information we provide is consistent with the intended purpose of the Benefits.gov website. Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as email addresses, may be requested for research purposes and stored by third-party sites. Submission is voluntary. The privacy protection provided on social media and third-party sites may not be the same as the privacy protection given by Benefits.gov and described here. If you are interested, we recommend visiting the third party's website, Qualtrics, to read their privacy policy.
Cookie Use Notice:
Cookies are small files that Web servers place on a user’s hard drive. We do not use cookies to collect any PII or to track user activities beyond our website. Cookies can serve several functions, depending on how they are designed:
We limit our use of cookies to "session cookies," types of cookies that are temporarily stored in your computer's memory. Session cookies disappear when the Web user terminates a Web session and closes the browser. Benefits.gov does not issue "persistent cookies," which are cookies that could be stored permanently on your workstation and reused each time you visit the Benefits.gov website. If you are concerned about the potential use of information gathered from your computer by cookies, you can set your browser to prompt you before it accepts a cookie. Most Internet browsers have settings that let you identify and/or reject cookies.
For security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, our website also employs software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. 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 of 1996.
Section 508 requires that all individuals with disabilities have access to, and use of information and data, comparable to that provided to individuals without disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the department. The Department of Labor, along with all Federal agencies, must comply with Section 508 to make electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Federal websites provided by the Department of Labor are subject to regulations requiring self-enforcement of Section 508 compliance. View the Department of Labor's Accessibility Statement to learn more.
When a webpage requires that an applet, plug-in or other application be used on the client system to interpret page content, the page must provide a link to the plug-in or applet the user needs in order to view that content. Links to applets, plug-ins or other applications are listed below:
We maintain this site to increase public access to government benefits information. We continually try to keep the information timely and accurate. If errors are brought to our attention, we will make efforts to correct them accordingly.
The documents on this site contain hyperlinks to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. Please be aware that we do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. Further, the inclusion of links to resources is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, or products or services offered.
Translations of any materials into languages other than English are intended solely as a convenience to the non-English reading public. We have attempted to provide an accurate translation of the original material in English, but slight differences may exist. In most non-English documents, the original English document is identified and available for reference.
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