Stearns County's Privacy Policy
Thank you for visiting Stearns County’s web site and reviewing our Privacy and Security policy.
Stearns County collects no personally identifying information about individuals who visit our web site, unless individuals choose to provide this information to us. In addition, Stearns County's web servers may place a "cookie" on the hard drive of a user's computer. Cookies enable Stearns County's web servers to manage communications between the server and the browser and may be used to store MySCGOV Web Service information provided by individuals.
If you choose to provide us with personal information -- as in an e-mail to County staff or by filling out a form with your personal information and submitting it to us through our web site -- we use that information only to respond to your message and to help us make our web site more useful to visitors. All information gathered is kept confidential and is used solely for the purpose of enhancing our ability to deliver services to our customers. This information will be used only to notify our customers of possible problems with an online service offering. We do not track or record information about individuals and their visits.
Stearns County does not share information (such as e-mail addresses) gathered through our online business partners with anyone except authorized personnel. Information will not be sold, transferred, marketed, disclosed, or otherwise shared with any outside entities except as may be mandated by the Minnesota Data Practices Act or valid court order.
MySCGOV Web Service
MySCGOV is a web site personalization feature available on Stearns County’s web site. The MySCGOV web service provides several convenient advantages which are intended to make our web site more helpful to County residents. In order to register for this personalized service, MySCGOV members may be asked to provide some personal information. All information gathered via the MySCGOV web service is kept confidential and is used solely for the purpose of enhancing our ability to deliver personalized services to our citizens.
The MySCGOV web service has built in security measures and members must establish a personal account to use this web service. Access to MySCGOV requires member authentication via a "sign in" using a confidential user id and password. MySCGOV members may "opt out" or cancel their membership at any time.
Online Payments
Transactions on our e-commerce servers are protected by powerful Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption technology (128 bit encryption), in standard use by major e-commerce web sites. SSL encrypts your bank account information, name, address, and phone number before this information is sent over the Internet.
Our web security system requires that customers use a browser that supports at least 40 bit encryption -- Netscape Navigator (version 3.0 or higher), Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 3.0 or higher), or the AOL browser (version 3.0 or higher). The use of these browsers ensures that data is authenticated and encrypted as it's transmitted.
Today, the Internet is actually one of the safest ways of conducting business. We have made it safer to conduct business on our web site than it is to use more traditional ways, such as through the mail or over the phone. Processing of online payments for Stearns County is provided by our business partners, EzGov, VeriSign and CyberSource.
Terms and Conditions of Use
The foregoing provisions constitute the terms and conditions of use and access to this site. Stearns County reserves the exclusive right to modify and change such terms and conditions without notice to users. Such changes are effective immediately upon being posted on this site. It is the responsibility of individual users to inform themselves and monitor the terms and conditions of use during each visit.