Public Disclosure

As a general rule, Catawba County does not disclose any personally identifiable information collected online except where you have given us permission, or where the information is requested to be disclosed and is public information under the State of North Carolina statutes or other applicable laws. Visitors to the site should be aware that North Carolina Statutes, Chapter 132, Public Records declares that it is the policy of this state that all state, county, and municipal records shall be open for personal inspection by any person, and thus information collected by the County resulting from the use of its websites may be subject to examination and inspection upon request, if such information is a public record and not otherwise protected from disclosure by statute.

If you send us personal information

If you choose to provide us with personal information -- by filling out a form with your personal information and submitting it to us through the website -- we use that information to respond to your message and to help us to provide you with a service or to get you the information you have requested. We only share the information you give us with another government agency if your inquiry relates to that agency, or as otherwise required by law. Catawba County does not collect information for commercial marketing.

Information collected and stored automatically

If all you do during your visit is browse through the website, read pages, or download information, we will gather and store certain information about your visit automatically. This information does not identify you personally. Only the following information is automatically collected and stored about your visit:

• The Internet domain (for example, "xcompany.com" if you use a private Internet access account, or "yourschool.edu" if you connect from a university's domain) and IP address (an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web) from which you access our website;
• The type of browser and operating system used to access our site;
• The date and time you access our site;
• The pages you visit; and
• If you linked to our website from another website, the address of that website.

We use this information to help us make the site more useful to visitors -- to learn about the number of visitors to our site and the types of technology our visitors use. We do not track or record information about individuals and their visits.