Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting the Ankeny Hill Nature Center (AHNC) website and reviewing our privacy policy. The Ankeny Hill Nature Center is located within and operated as part of the Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge. As such, we abide by the Policies of the US Department of the Interior. How we handle information we learn about you from your visit to our website depends upon what you do when visiting our site.

Information Collected and Stored Automatically

If you visit our site to read or download information, such as consumer brochures or press releases, we will automatically collect and store the following information about your visit:

  • The name of the Internet domain (for example, "xcompany.com" if you use a private Internet access account, or "yourschool.edu" if you are connecting from a university's domain);

  • The IP address (a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you are using the Internet) from which you access our site;

  • The type of browser and operating system used to access our site;

  • The date and time you access our site;

  • The Internet address of the website from which you linked directly to our site;

  • The country and state from which you access our site;

  • The pages you visit, the information you request, and

  • Search terms used to get to our website from an external search engine and terms used on our site using our search engine.

This information does not identify you; we do not store any personal identifiers. The information collected is part of a systems log file and is only used internally for site management.

This information is primarily collected to create summary statistics, which are used to assess what information is of most and least interest, determine technical design specifications, and identify system performance or problem areas. We also use the information to measure the number of visitors to the different sections of our site and to help us make our site more helpful to visitors.

If You Send Us Personal Information

You do not have to provide personal information to visit our website. However, if you do so, such as by sending an email, submitting a form, or filling out a questionnaire or guestbook, we will use the information you provide to respond to you.

Please do not email us sensitive information, such as your credit card or social security numbers. A third party may intercept this information during transmission, and we cannot guarantee its safety while in transit.

We use personally identifiable information to protect the privacy of our website visitors and provide better service. For example, we may correct broken links you have identified or provide additional requested information.

Any information we collect via a questionnaire or a guestbook may be subject to disclosure. However, we will handle it according to the requirements of the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act to ensure the most significant protection of personal privacy.

We may transfer personal information to a third party only in the following cases:

  • To a bank or United States Department of the Treasury account, which must receive payment for a transaction that you initiated;

  • To a company that is contracted to assist us with specific services, including electronic commerce or donations, and which agrees not to sell or use personal information for other purposes;

  • To legal authorities if we suspect that you are attempting to change or otherwise damage this website or you are using it in violation of Federal or local laws;

  • or to Congress or a court in response to a subpoena.

Neither the Ankeny Hill Nature Center nor the Department of the Interior collects information for commercial marketing purposes.

Information Collected for Tracking and Customization (Cookies)

A cookie is a small file that a website transfers to your computer to allow it to remember specific information about your session while you are connected. Your computer will only share the information in the cookie with the website that provided it, and no other website can request it. There are two types of cookies: session and persistent. Session cookies last only as long as your Web browser is open. Once you close your browser, the cookie disappears. Persistent cookies store information on your computer for more extended periods.

The AHNC website may use session cookies for technical purposes, such as to enable better navigation or to allow you to customize your preferences for interacting with the site. The AHNC website may also use persistent cookies to remember you between visits, so, for example, you can save your customized preference settings for future visits. The AHNC website uses persistent cookies and identifies itself as doing so. If you do not wish to store session or persistent cookies on your machine, you can turn them off in your browser. However, this may affect the functioning of some Interior websites.

USA.gov provides instructions for "opting out" of web measurement and customization technologies by disabling cookies on your web browser.

Providing Information to Third Parties

Ankeny Hill Nature Center may share information with private organizations as part of a service that provides its users with increased capabilities or functionality on the site.

Google Analytics: "Like many services, Google Analytics uses … cookies to track visitor interactions. These cookies store information, such as when the current visit occurred, whether the visitor has been to the site before, and what site referred the visitor to the web page. Browsers do not share … cookies across domains" (from the Google Analytics privacy overview. The Department of the Interior does not collect personally identifiable information from these third-party tools nor provide them with additional PII. We use IP masking to share only a portion of the IP address for geolocation. In addition, Google provides an Opt-out Browser Add-on "to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics." AHNC does not endorse or make any representation of the effectiveness of the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

YouTube: Some of our video presentation may be provided by YouTube.com. It is labeled as such. According to the YouTube privacy policy, YouTube "may record information about your usage of the site, such as the channels, groups and favorites you subscribe to, which other users you communicate with, the videos you watch, the frequency and size of data transfers, and information you display about yourself as well as information you click on in YouTube (including UI elements, settings). If you are logged in, we may associate that information with your YouTube Account." More is available on YouTube's privacy policy page.

We use information provided by third-party tools to improve our AHNC presence and the end-user experience.

Links to Other Sites

Our website links to Federal agencies and, in some cases, private organizations. Once you access another site through a link we provide, you are subject to that site's privacy policy. The privacy policies and procedures described here do not apply to external sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any site you link to from ours, especially if you share any personal information.

Social Media

Our primary social media channels, (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube) each has its own privacy policy. AHNC the bit.ly URL shortener in some instances. According to its privacy policy, bit.ly uses cookies (see Cookies above). Those cookies are invoked only if the shortened bit.ly URL is clicked.

Website Security

For site security and to ensure this service remains available to all users, this government computer system employs 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. Unauthorized attempts to upload or change information on this site are strictly prohibited. They may be punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.

We use virus protection measures on our computer systems and regularly update the software. These are computer security measures that, in addition to maintaining our computer systems, ensure that all files we develop and/or post on our web servers are virus-free. When you request a file for download from our site, it is possible, though unlikely, that the data may contract a virus and become corrupted before it reaches your computer. The Department of the Interior is not responsible for files that may become corrupted as the data travels the Internet.