Privacy Policy for Google Analytics on the PDS Website

The Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS) uses Google Analytics and its advertising features for the sole purpose of evaluating and maintaining the PDS website. Google Analytics collects information about user demographics, interests, and traffic flow including how often users visit the PDS website, what pages they visit, when they do so, and what other sites they visit prior to coming to the PDS website. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to a user on the date they visit the PDS website, not their name or other identifying information. Additionally, PDS does not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on a user web browser to identify them as a unique user the next time they visit PDS’s website, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about user visits to the PDS website is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. Users can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing them on return visits to the PDS website by disabling cookies on their browser.

Google Analytics employs cookies to define user sessions, which allows for the collection of data about how visitors are using the PDS website. Google Analytics uses only first-party cookies for data analysis. This means that the cookies are linked to a specific website domain, and Google Analytics will only use that cookie data for statistical analysis related to a user’s browsing behavior on a specific website. According to Google, the data collected cannot be altered or retrieved by services from other domains. If a user chooses, they can opt out by turning off cookies in the preferences settings of their web browser. For more information on Google Analytics, please visit Google Analytics.

Additionally, visitors to the PDS website can opt-out of the Google Analytics advertising features through ads settings, ad settings for mobile apps, or visiting https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/.