Privacy Policy

Introduction

The Village of Downing (“Village”) is committed to maintaining your online privacy. The Village’s online Privacy Policy applies to data collected from the Village of Downing website.

We do not collect personal information without your permission. Any information that you volunteer, or that we send to you in response, is transferred using industry standard encryption technologies. Never share more information than what is required to complete a transaction. For more information about being safe online, visit the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Stop. Think. Connect.

Information Gathering

If you visit the Village’s website to read or download information, such as events schedules or building permits, we only capture and store the domain name of your computer (for example, gmail.com) and other related information to speed up the performance of web page delivery. We collect no other personal information.

As a part of maintaining our web presence, we may use analytic and security tools hosted by third parties or managed within the Village. These tools help us measure traffic and usage trends for our web site and help ensure that this service remains available to all users.

Cookies

We use cookies* to deliver website functionality and enhance your experience. For example, cookies allow us to provide you with a secure log-in, maintain continuity during interactions with the website and collect statistics that help us optimize speed and performance. You may see evidence of these tools stored as cookies on your personal computer after visiting the Village’s website.

*A cookie is a very small text file inserted onto your computer by a website that you visit. When you return to the website, the cookie is then read by the site’s web server. Cookies are used for many things, from making web sites more personal to tracking your web browsing habits.

Online Transactions

For online government transactions conducted on the Village’s website, you will be asked to enter certain information about yourself and/or the organization with which you are affiliated. The specifics of this information will vary as required by the type of transaction. In each case, any information submitted online for these activities is subject to the same safeguards as if you had engaged in these activities in person rather than over the Internet. Information collected in the course of the transaction is used to communicate with you about your transaction or provide information that may be useful to you. Our goal is to collect only enough information as is reasonable to perform our services and to let you know when providing personal information is optional.

Email List

While we do have an email list for our residents (you must sign up to be included in our email list), to keep them aware of activities within the village, the Village of Downing will never request confidential personal or financial information via an unsolicited email. The Village will also never send you an unsolicited e-mail containing a link to a Village website where confidential personal or financial information is requested. If you receive such an email, purportedly from the Village, you are encouraged to immediately contact clerk@downingwi.com.

Please be aware that fraudulent email scams called “phishing” have been increasing in frequency. “Phishing” involves a victim receiving an e-mail appearing to be from a legitimate business. The “from” line is often forged and the e-mail usually contains authentic looking graphics making it appear to be legitimate. The email may also contain what appears to be a legitimate link to that organization (e.g., downingwi.com). When the victim clicks on this link, they are then taken to what appears to be a legitimate looking website. Criminals can even make your browser’s address bar contain the address of the legitimate organization despite the fact that the website is a forgery. Victims are then encouraged to enter personal information including credit card numbers and expiration dates. For more general information about “phishing” visit the Federal Trade Commission website.

Data Sharing

The Village of Downing understands the value of personal information and works to protect the personal information we collect from the public. The Village does not sell or rent data, including personally identifiable information. We occasionally will share this information with other nonprofit organizations or governmental entities in order to support the transaction or service.

As a governmental entity in the State of Wisconsin, Downing subject to the Wisconsin Privacy Laws – Government Records (State and Local), which defines how records should be managed. Further, almost all information that government entities, including cities, collect are subject to public disclosure request. This ensures that the public can find out what information has been collected about them and provide a way to know more about how our government operates. The State of Wisconsin Open Records Law outlines legal requirements that govern requests for government records, and specifies which records are exempt.

Links to other Websites

This site contains links to other sites. The Village is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such sites. You should check the privacy policy of each of these sites if you have concerns about how they handle personally identifiable information.