The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (the “Museum”) is committed to protecting individual privacy. The Museum secures the personal information you make available to us when you visit ushmm.org or the Museum’s pages hosted by other sites, such as our official profiles on social networking sites. This Privacy Statement describes how we use, share, retain, and protect information that is collected when you visit the Museum’s website. The following topics are covered in this statement:
Information Received by the Museum (when you provide it, visit ushmm.org, receive email updates, or interact with official Museum presences on third-party sites)
How This Information is Used
Sharing of This Information
Data Retention
Third-Party Tools and Sites
Children and Privacy
Security
If you have questions about this statement or suggestions for its improvement, please let us know at ushmm.org/contact.
Information Received by the Museum
Personally Identifiable Information
The Museum does not collect personally identifiable information (“PII”) about you when you visit our website unless you choose to provide such information to us through your browser permissions. When you voluntarily provide PII, you are giving the Museum your permission to use the information for the specific, stated purpose described. Some information is automatically collected when you visit our websites, and this topic is discussed in the next section.
For some services, we may need certain PII such as a name, address, telephone number, email address, or other contact information in order to provide you with the service you requested. These are some examples, but it is not a complete list:
Applying for jobs through the Careers Portal
Completing a Museum form
Contributing or donating to the Museum
Purchasing items from the Museum
Registering for a Museum event
Reserving a timed entry ticket
If you choose not to provide PII, it might not be possible for you to successfully complete your task. There may be workarounds for some of these services, and please feel free to contact the Museum if you need further assistance.
Information Collected and Stored Automatically
When you visit the Museum’s website, the following basic information is automatically received and stored by the web servers hosting ushmm.org:
The originating Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is a number assigned to a computer when surfing the internet
The internet domain name
Information about your computer or mobile set-up (meaning the type and version of your web browser, operating system, screen resolution, and connection speed)
The pages on ushmm.org that you visit
The internet address of the website that connected you to our site, if you accessed ushmm.org via a link on another page (also known as “referral traffic”)
The amount of data transmitted from ushmm.org to your computer
The Museum also uses web measurement and customization technologies, which are also known as “cookies.” When you visit any website, its server may generate a piece of computer code—the “cookie”—to place on your computer. Cookies allow websites to “remember” visitors’ preferences, surfing patterns, and behavior while they are connected.
The cookie makes it easier for you to use the dynamic features of our website. Cookies from the Museum’s website only collect information about your browser’s visit to the site; they do not collect any personal information about you unless you expressly give them permission.
If you do not wish to have cookies stored on your machine, you can opt out or disable cookies in your browser. You will still have access to most, if not all, information and resources at ushmm.org. Please note that turning off cookies may affect the functioning of some pages. Be aware that disabling cookies in your browser will affect cookie usage at most other websites you visit as well.
There are two types of cookies, single session (temporary) and multi-session (persistent). Session cookies last only as long as your Web browser is open. Once you close your browser, the cookie disappears. Session cookies are for technical purposes such as to enable better navigation through our site. These cookies let our server know that you are continuing a visit to our site.
Persistent cookies are stored on your computer for longer periods. Persistent cookies differentiate between new and returning visitors to our site. The life of the Museum’s persistent cookies depends on your own browsing habits, and these cookies serve many purposes, including, but not limited to, the data collection described in this document and a better browsing experience.
Email Subscriptions
In order to manage the Museum’s email subscription lists, we retain the names and email addresses of our email subscribers, as well as other information they may have shared with us (for example, addresses and phone numbers), logs of emails we send, and automatically generated email data used to improve our email communications. This automatically generated email data (generated through tools such as “pixel tags” and link redirects) includes:
The recipient’s email client
Whether the email was opened
If a link in the message was clicked
Whether an email was delivered
If the email was forwarded
If the email was printed
If, at any time, you wish to stop receiving our messages, click on the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each email message.
Third-Party Websites
The Museum maintains official pages or accounts on third-party websites in order to better engage with the public. The Museum does not own such websites, and your activity on those sites is governed by the third-party website’s security and privacy policies. Users of third-party sites often share information with the general public, user community, and/or the third-party operating the site. Consequently, you should review the privacy policies of third-party sites before using them and ensure that you understand how your information may be shared and used. You should also adjust privacy settings on your account on any third-party site to match your preferences.
For aggregate statistical analysis and to improve the quality of our services, we may integrate web measurement tools with our social media pages. These tools enable basic analysis of social media traffic (such as the number of people visiting a certain page) and do not collect personally identifiable information.
How Information is Used
If you choose to provide us with information, we may use that information to contact you, respond to your message, or provide you the information or services you requested. In order to serve you better, we may analyze multiple sources of data you have provided (for example, to look up whether you previously contacted the Museum about the same topic so that we do not send you a duplicative response). We may also use information or comments collected through ushmm.org or official social media pages for our own purposes, such as for guest interaction or Museum marketing.
We may use data you provide and other automatically generated data for statistical analysis to assess, for example, what information is of interest to users, technical design specifications, and system performance. This allows us to make general improvements to our site as well as to offer tailored content to email subscribers (for example, a follow-up message to subscribers interested in a specific topic based on information they have provided or automatically generated data). We may also use your information in order to detect, prevent, and respond to security issues and other harmful or unlawful activities on ushmm.org. If you have given your permission, your information may be used for the stated purpose described on the website, such as employment, donations, or timed ticket entry.
Sharing of this Information
Information you choose to share with the Museum (directly and via third-party sites) may be treated as public information. We may, for example, publish messages or comments collected through the Museum’s official social media pages. Additionally, the Museum may occasionally share, exchange, or rent information which may include your name, address, email address, and demographic data with other charitable or cultural non-profit organizations. However, we exercise discretion to limit such disclosures to protect your privacy as appropriate and as determined by the Museum (for example, we generally publish social media usernames rather than actual names).
At this time, the Museum currently uses the following third-party analytics providers to analyze data from cookies*. The analytics may include data regarding your visit, including button click data, the pages visited, and information you entered into empty text fields and boxes. While the providers may change at the Museum’s discretion, the basic principles of any collection will remain the same; the third-party analytics providers do and will not receive PII through these cookies. We have also limited a provider’s ability to see your full IP address (a process known as “IP masking”). Please review each company’s privacy policy for additional information.
In some cases, we may share information you have provided or automatically generated information with other government agencies in response to lawful law enforcement requests, to protect the Museum from security threats, or where required by law.
Unless otherwise indicated, we do not use or share your information for commercial purposes and, except as described above, we do not exchange or otherwise disclose this information.
Data Retention
The Museum retains data consistent with applicable federal law and its own internal policies.
Third-Party Tools and Sites
The Museum’s pages may link to websites created and maintained by other public and/or private organizations and individuals. When you follow a link to an external site, you are leaving ushmm.org and are subject to the external site’s privacy and security policies. We do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of information contained on an external site. We also do not endorse the site’s sponsor, any views they express, or any products or services they offer.
Children and Privacy
We believe in the importance of protecting the privacy of children online. Our site is not generally intended to solicit information from children under age 13. Verifiable consent from a child’s parent or guardian is required before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from a child under age 13.
Some of the Museum’s online programs and applications, while not intended to solicit information of any kind from children under age 13, may offer educational content of interest to children under the age of 13. As a result, the Museum may occasionally receive personally identifiable information from a child. If a user known to be a child under 13 submits information to the Museum, we use the information provided only to respond to the one-time request or communication, and we do not use the information for any other purpose, and we will delete the information as soon as practicable. For example, a child may use their email address to send us a photograph for a Museum web page for students. We will use the email address to send the child confirmation that we have received the photo and we will then delete the email address.
On occasion, the Museum may occasionally provide an online interactive program for children under the age of 13. To register for such programs, a guardian or teacher must register on behalf of the child. If the Museum becomes aware that a child has registered themselves and has posted personally identifiable information on any of our web pages, we will delete the information as soon as practicable.
If you believe that we have received information from or about children under age 13, please contact us at ogc@ushmm.org.
Security
We take reasonable precautions to protect our website and information collected by or submitted to ushmm.org or an official Museum page on a third-party site. For example, we restrict access to personally identifiable information to employees, contractors, and vendors subject to non-disclosure requirements who require access to this information in order to perform their official duties and exercise controls to limit what data they can view based on the specific needs of their position. Access to official Museum accounts on third-party sites is limited to the individuals who administer those accounts, and all official Museum accounts are clearly labeled.
We also utilize commonly used practices and technical controls to protect the information in our possession or control, along with ushmm.org itself. These practices and controls include, but are not limited to: encrypting the transfer of personal information over the internet via Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), using high-strength firewalls and intrusion detection systems (IDS) to safeguard personal information, and maintaining strict technical controls and procedures to ensure the integrity of all data on ushmm.org.
We periodically review our processes and systems to verify compliance with industry best practices and to ensure the highest level of security for our website.
Thank you so much for reviewing our Privacy Statement, and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Museum at ogc@ushmm.org.
November 9, 2023
*The Museum currently uses cookies from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram; Google; Amazon; Check Point Software Technologies; and our web host, Apache.
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