Privacy and Security Statement

The Public Comment Analysis Toolkit web site is wholly owned, operated, and maintained by Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP), in the University Center for Social and Urban Research, at the University of Pittsburgh, and QDAP-UMass, in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The Public Comment Analysis Toolkit is provided as a service to the general community. This Privacy and Security Statement contains policies pertaining to the privacy of visitors and registered users of the Public Comment Analysis Toolkit, and to security of data within the Toolkit.

Information Collected

We will not use the information collected from you in any way, shape, or form other than for use pertaining directly to this website. In addition, any other assets you provide us (including images, email addresses, etc.) will be held in the strictest confidence. In addition, The University Center for Social and Urban Research does not collect personally identifiable information about you except when you specifically provide the information on a voluntary basis. If The University Center for Social and Urban Research wishes to use any portion of your account, data collected from your analysis, or any other material for marketing and/or demonstration purposes, The University Center for Social and Urban Research warrants that The University Center for Social and Urban Research will obtain necessary and proper permission before using any portion of your data or other material.

Information Use

The University Center for Social and Urban Research reserves the right to perform statistical analysis of user behavior and characteristics to measure interest in and the use of various areas of the Public Comment Analysis Toolkit web site. The web site does collect IP addresses, as well as access dates, times, browser type, and operating system type, within its web site logs. This data is only analyzed in aggregate form and no connection is made between you and the data recorded within your session.

Cookies

A cookie is a small piece of information stored on the user's system that may contain various pieces of data in regard to the user's use of the web site. The Public Comment Analysis Toolkit utilizes cookies to keep track of various session variables. If a user is logged in as registered user, cookies are utilized to keep track of the logged in state of the user, various access parameters, and other account-specific information. At no time is any personal information transmitted via, or stored within any cookies originating from the Toolkit. All cookies from the Toolkit are destroyed once the user quits out of their browser.

General Security Policy

The University Center for Social and Urban Research maintains security measures to protect visitor and registered user information, however The University Center for Social and Urban Research is not responsible for the leakage of any member or visitor information due to the Public Comment Analysis Toolkit being hacked or other registered users and/or visitors tampering with the web site. Registered users assume the risk that any information submitted, however secure, may be illegally misappropriated by others. The University Center for Social and Urban Research agrees to fully cooperate with law enforcement officials to protect and retrieve any information that may be illegally misappropriated by others.

The University Center for Social and Urban Research will not be held liable in any manner for abuse or any unintended use of the Toolkit by a visitor to the web site, an account holder of the web site, or by any third party whatsoever. All account holders are responsible for keeping their user name and password secret. The University Center for Social and Urban Research discourages the practice of allowing multiple users to log on using the same username and password, and will not be held liable for any misappropriation or loss of data that results from such account sharing.

The policies outlined within this privacy and security policy are effective as of 7/1/2007. The University Center for Social and Urban Research reserves the right to change this policy at any time without notice, but will make efforts to notify account holders of the Public Comment Analysis Toolkit. This statement and the policies outlined within are not intended to and do not create any contractual or other legal rights on the behalf of any party.

© 2009-2010 - PCAT is hosted and maintained by Texifter, LLC and powered by Microsoft ASP.NET, with technical and project support provided by the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP), in the University Center for Social and Urban Research, at the University of Pittsburgh and QDAP-UMass, in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Content on this website was made possible with the following grants from the National Science Foundation: IIS-0917773, IIS-0705091 and IIS-0704210 "Collaborative Research III-COR: From a Pile of Documents to a Collection of Information: A Framework for Multi-Dimensional Text Analysis" as well as IIS-0429293 "Collaborative Research: Language Processing Technology for Electronic Rulemaking." We are also grateful for financial support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation.