Who we are
Our blog address is: https://dchsblog.com. Our website address is https://www.kingcounty.gov.
King County, as a government entity, conducts public business and its records related to the business of King County are generally available for public review. Nevertheless, King County is committed, to the extent allowable by law, to protect and secure your personal information contained in King County records. This privacy commitment must be balanced with the rights of public access under Chapter 42.56 RCW (Washington Public Disclosure Act) and consistent with KCC 2.14.030 and any other applicable federal, state, and local statute or regulation.
Information privacy
King County gathers personal information when it is relevant and necessary, fair and to the extent possible with the knowledge and consent of the individual, to accomplish county business. We only obtain this information through legal means. When King County collects personal information from you, we:
- Tell you why we are collecting this personal information.
- Limit the amount of your personal information that we collect to that which is necessary for the stated purpose for which it was collected.
- Take steps to use your personal information to the stated purpose for which it was collected.
- Take steps to ensure that, at the time of collection, your personal information is accurate, complete and current.
- Provide your personal information only to authorized King County employees and private contractors or public organizations on a need-to-know basis and as a result of a public disclosure request as required by the Public Records Act.
- Do not sell or make your personal information available to others without your consent
except when:- Legally required or permitted by law; or
- Needed to complete your transaction with the county.
- Retain personal information only as long as necessary to conduct county business in accordance with records retention schedules.
- Dispose of personal information in a secure manner that prevents unauthorized disclosure.
- Take organizational, technological, and physical measures to securely safeguard personal information.
Information specific to the Internet
King County may track information, such as user hits, visits and sessions; however this information cannot be linked to a specific person.
Cookies are another example of anonymous information that we may use. Cookies are small text files that are placed on a user’s computer by a Web server. We occasionally use cookies to tailor information to the needs of a user’s specific browser. Our Web server is not able to determine any data about you nor does it do anything with these cookies.
Personal information collected on certain King County webpages is data that you provide to us about yourself. Providing personal information to us on our website is purely voluntary. This information is used to better serve you. Should you choose not to provide personal information to King County on a website, you may provide this information to us in another way, such as visiting a county office during normal business hours or, for some county services, completing your business by mail or telephone.
When King County collects personal information from children using our website, it complies with the Federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
King County’s website has links to other websites, including other government agencies, nonprofit organizations and private businesses. When you link to one of these external websites, you are no longer on King County’s website and this privacy notice no longer applies. Instead, you are subject to the privacy notice or other terms and conditions of that website.
Review and correct your personal information
Upon request to a specific King County agency, you may review your personal information that the agency maintains about you and ask that agency to correct any inaccuracies.
Other King County privacy notices
Some King County agencies may have privacy notices that are more restrictive than this information privacy notice. In that case, the agency’s specific privacy notice takes precedence over this notice. For privacy inquiries specific to a King County agency’s privacy notice, please contact that agency directly.
Alternate formats of this document are available by telephone at 206-263-0346 or TTY Relay 711.
Comments policy
King County welcomes dialogue with the public. Please be aware your comments are subject to public disclosure laws and we will screen for the following:
- Potentially libelous comments.
- Obscene or explicit comments.
- Hateful or mean-spirited comments.
- Personal attacks, insults, or threatening language.
- Plagiarized material, or material that violates intellectual property rights.
- Private, personal information published without consent.
- Commercial promotions or spam.
- Comments that are off-topic or that link to material that is off-topic.
- Comments that embed images from external sources.
- Comments that violate any law.
If you have any questions about our comments policies, please don’t hesitate to ask. Comments will be screened periodically during standard business days.
WordPress: What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact forms
Contact forms are used solely for the purpose of building our blog subscriptions list. We do not share or distribute this information to any other parties.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
WordPress: How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
WordPress: What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
WordPress: Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
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