The staff at the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) realize that keeping financial and demographic information secure is one of our most important responsibilities. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect member and employer information. OPERS employees are authorized to access member information for business purposes only. Our employees are bound by information security polices and a code of ethics that require confidential treatment of member information and are subject to disciplinary action if they fail to follow these requirements.

Sharing Information

OPERS does not sell or share member information collected from our website with third parties who may want to offer you their own products and services. We may share member information we collect from you online with organizations that work for us in delivering our services to our members. All organizations that act on our behalf are contractually obligated to keep the information we provide to them confidential and to use the member information we share only to provide the services we ask them to perform for you and us. We may also share information we collect about you online to outside organizations when required by law. For example, member information may be disclosed in connection with a subpoena or similar legal process in the investigation of suspected fraudulent activity.

Public Disclosure

Some of the information collected at this site becomes a public record. This includes personal information OPERS may request from you in order to provide requested services. However, certain information may be protected from general release by one or more Oregon laws. These laws include Oregon´s Public Records Law (Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) 192.410-192.505). If information is protected under one of these laws, it will not be released unless a requestor qualifies to receive the information. Information that is specifically exempt from public disclosure includes:

Employee and retiree address, telephone number and other nonfinancial membership records and employee financial records maintained by the Public Employees Retirement System pursuant to ORS chapters 238 and 238A.

Secure Transmission

For secured-data transmission, this site uses the industry standard encryption methodology, Secure Socket Layer (SSL). The URL in your browser will change to "HTTPS" instead of "HTTP" when this security feature is invoked. Your browser may also display a lock or key symbol on its task bar to indicate secure transmission mode has been invoked. If these indicators are not present, any information is susceptible to interception by other parties. Most Internet e-mail communication will not be secure. If you are communicating sensitive information, you might want to consider sending it in by postal mail.

Information Collected When You Browse

If you do nothing during your visit to this web site but browse or download information, we automatically collect and store the standard data collected by all web server software. That information is as follows:

1. The Internet Protocol (IP) address and domain name used (but not the e-mail address). The IP address is a numerical identifier assigned either to your Internet service provider or directly to your computer. We use the Internet IP to respond to your browser request. Example: 122.125.36.42;
2. The Domain domain name (DNS) assigned on the Internet to your IP Address (if there is one). Example: somename.com;
3. The type of browser and operating system you used. Example: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT; IE4WDUS-1998101501);
4. The date and time you visited this site;
5. The web pages or services you accessed at this site; and
6. The web site you visited prior to coming to this web site. (Note: this is included so that summary analysis can be done on how visitors get to our site, i.e., from a search engine, from a link on another site, etc.)

We do not track individual user navigation choices. We do, however, summarize the information listed above to determine:

• what organizations are our most frequent users (item 2 above) to better target our content for the audience.
• what browsers are being used on our site to determine what techniques we can use to develop pages that will work with different browsers (item 3 above).
• how often our pages are being used (item 5 above).
• by the traffic from organization names such things as the search engines that are good at directing people to the site (item 6 above)

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this site may monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. If security monitoring reveals evidence of possible abuse or criminal activity, system personnel may provide the results of such monitoring to appropriate officials. Except for authorized law enforcement investigations no attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the state law and federal statutes including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file created by a web server and stored on your computer hard drive. OPERS uses cookies to collect non-personal information and data for site and session management purposes. These cookies are written in such a way that they are only used by our website management tools or our web applications and these only read the cookies they place on your computer. They neither retrieve information from other cookie files, nor access any other information on your computer. With cookies it is possible to save unique information which the web server can then use either while you browse or when you return to the website. Typical data saved in cookies are things such as your site preferences, the date when you last looked at a specific page or a random number used to identify your session at a particular website.

Also, cookies help us measure things like how many visitors come to our website, how many of these visitors are new and how many visitors are returning for a repeat visit. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers allowing you to deny or accept the cookie feature (refer to your browser's help function for details). While most browsers have the option allowing you to control the use of cookies, doing so might result in some features on the site not working correctly.

E-mail

If you send us an E-mail message with a question or comment that contains personal information, we will only use the information to respond to your request. However, please note that e-mails received from this site are considered public record. Certain information contained in the e-mail may be protected from general release under Oregon's Public Records Law (ORS 192.410-192.505) or Oregon's Record Privacy Law (ORS 802.175-802.191). This information may only be released if a requestor qualifies under the law to receive the information.

Guarding Your Information

OPERS recommends that you take the following precautions to guard against the disclosure and unauthorized use of your account and personal information:

• Never provide personal information (including full Social Security number) over the phone unless you have initiated the call and know with whom you are speaking
• Memorize PINs (personal identification numbers) and refrain from writing PINs or Social Security numbers where they can easily be found
• Immediately change preassigned PINs to a personally memorized PIN
• Do not use easily identifiable numbers such as birth dates, addresses, phone numbers or Social Security numbers when choosing your PIN
• Store account statements in a safe place
• Never include your Social Security Number in an unsecured e-mail message

Links to Other Sites - A Disclaimer

This site may contain links to other web sites as a convenience to our members. These may include links to web sites operated by other government agencies, nonprofit organizations and private businesses. When you use one of these links, you are no longer on this site and this privacy policy will not apply. When you link to another web site, you are subject to the privacy policy of that new site.

When you follow a link to one of these sites neither the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, the State of Oregon, nor any agency, officer, or employee of the State of Oregon warrants the accuracy, reliability or timeliness of any information published by these external sites, nor endorses any content, viewpoints, products, or services linked from these systems, and can not be held liable for any losses caused by reliance on the accuracy, reliability or timeliness of their information. Portions of such information may be incorrect or not current. Any person or entity that relies on any information obtained from these systems does so at his or her own risk.