REGIONAL INCOME TAX AGENCY WEBSITE PRIVACY POLICY

This Privacy Policy addresses the collection, security and access to information that may be obtained by the Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) through your use of RITA’s websites, including RITA’s on-line applications and newsletter/information recipients and those who interact with the Agency’s marketing services (QR Codes). This policy covers the following topics:

• Information Collected
• Public Records
• External Links
• Security
• Email
• Statistical Information
• Cookies
• Contact

Information Collected

It is not the policy of the Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) to collect personal information about you when you visit our website, unless you choose to make such information available through the applications we provide. By visiting our website, you are agreeing to the practices described in this policy.

By using the Agency’s on-line applications, including on-line surveys/feedback and registrations, you are sending us personal information (e.g., your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address or other information). RITA stores this information in order to respond to or process your request or otherwise resolve the subject matter of your submission. Please see the Statistical Section for more details on the additional information collected and maintained by RITA.

We will not distribute your personal information to anyone for purposes other than the administration of municipal income tax, unless required to do so by law.

For marketing purposes, the Agency may obtain the following information using a third party service:

• Contact information and geographic location
• Personal/demographic information
• Authentication information

Public Records

Visitors to RITA’s website should be aware that, subject to specific statutory exceptions, some documents and records maintained by RITA, including, but not limited to, certain electronic data, may be public records under State of Ohio law. Information gained from tax returns, and all related documents and information, is not a public record. If you have questions about the Ohio public records law, refer to State of Ohio Revised Code Section 149.43, Availability of Public Records.

External Links

RITA’s website contains external links to information and services located on websites maintained by other public agencies and private organizations and these external links are not covered by this Privacy Policy. Once you access another website, you are subject to the privacy policy and terms of usage for that particular website. RITA is not responsible for the privacy of sites that are accessed from links contained on RITA’s website.

Security

RITA takes very seriously the confidentiality of the information and integrity of systems we maintain. Therefore, we have instituted security measures for all information systems under our control. These security measures are designed to identify and prevent attempts to tamper with this website. Information collected through these security measures may be used in connection with a criminal prosecution or other legal proceedings.

Any electronic mail (e-mails) received by RITA that may be in violation of local, state, or federal law may be referred to the proper authorities.

If you choose to send an e-mail to RITA, you should be aware that electronic mail (e-mail) is not necessarily secure against interception, and may be subject to the disclosure requirements of the Public Records Act or other legal disclosure requirements.

Email

Certain applications on this website provide the ability to notify you regarding activity performed on your account via e-mail. This may be in response to an inquiry made by you or information you submitted such as a payment or tax filing using our secure applications. These messages will be for notification purposes only and will never be used to solicit information from you regarding your tax account.

Do not respond to unsolicited e-mails that claim to come from RITA, or any e-mail from an unknown party asking you to submit personal, tax or financial data.

RITA does not use e-mail to request any personal, tax or financial information.

We collect certain information from emails sent to you from RITA. This includes tracking whether you have opened an email sent by RITA’s Online Services or if you click a link provided in an email sent by RITA.

Mobile Phone Number

In order to provide an additional layer of security, you may provide your mobile phone number in order to utilize RITA’s Two Step Authentication service for accessing certain online applications. Your mobile phone number will be used to deliver a verification code. We will not share your mobile phone number with any third parties that have the intent to sell or distribute your information.

Statistical Information

In order to improve service on our website, we automatically collect and maintain statistical information in our site's data logs that show network traffic flow and volume.

This information is:

• The Internet Protocol (IP) Address from which you access our website.
• The local date and time that you access our website.
• The type of browser and operating system used to access our website.
• The web pages on RITA’s site that you visit. This helps to determine which information on our site the public finds most useful and enables us to make it easier to access.
• Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) packet data. This information is used to detect malicious activity on our website.
• Session cookies that help us identify active users accessing our on-line applications.
• Other cookies are used to validate voluntary customer survey results.
• Number of bytes received helps determine the computer and network capacity required to make the site available to the public.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files saved to your computer that store information specific to a website. RITA uses “Temporary” or “session” cookies to improve security, track decisions for future use in browsing sessions, and to uniquely identify your browsing sessions. RITA does not store personally identifiable information about visitors in cookies.

Uses of cookies within RITA’s websites include:

• Test cookies to determine if cookies are available.
• Session identity tokens to uniquely identify users and browsing sessions.
• Application anti-forgery tokens used to help reject modified requests or man-in-the-middle attacks.
• Firewall session and anti-forgery tokens used to help prevent brute force attacks, reject modified requests, and prevent future malicious or malformed requests.
• Google’s Recaptcha to prevent brute force attacks.

If you are concerned about the potential use of the information gathered from your computer by cookies, you can set your web browser to prompt you before it accepts a cookie. You can remove or block the use of web measurement and customization technologies by changing the setting of your browser to block cookies as described at http://www.usa.gov/optout_instructions.shtml.

You can configure your web browser to accept or decline cookies, or to alert you when cookies are in use. You do not have to accept cookies from us, but if you choose not to, some of the functions on our site will not be available to you.

Contact

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your privacy or this Privacy Policy, contact the Agency at:

Please note that the email address provided above is ONLY used to address questions or concerns regarding RITA’s Privacy Policy.