Privacy Statement

Last Updated: June 10, 2020

This Privacy Statement describes the information we collect about you as a visitor to www.dallaserf.org, any pages therein, including the account portal (the “Website”). The Website was created by The Employees’ Retirement Fund of the City of Dallas (referred to herein as the “Fund, us, ‎we, or ‎our”) to enhance public access to agency information and is continually under development. By visiting, using or inputting information into our Website, you are accepting and consenting to the ‎practices described in this Privacy Statement and as described in our “Terms of Use”.‎

Information Collection, Use and Disclosure

All information collected or maintained by the Fund is subject to the provisions of the Texas Public Information ‎‎Act, Chapter 552 of the Texas Government Code.‎ ‎In general, the Fund is providing this Website, including the account portal, to provide information and resources to individual members, retirees, annuitants, beneficiaries, or alternate payees who are or may be entitled to retirement benefits now (or in the future) from us. However, we do collect certain information from individuals who use our Website.

 

We [or our‎ service providers]1 may use tracking technologies to observe your activities, interactions, preferences, transactional information, and other computer and connection information (such as an IP address) relating to your use of our Website. See the “Tracking Technologies” section below for more information. We may use the information we collect to understand how our Website is being used and to make improvements. In addition, we may use your information to diagnose Website technical problems, as well as to prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate potential security issues, as well as fraudulent or illegal activity.

 

In order to access the account portal on ‎our Website‎, you will need to register an account with a username and password. As part of registering and using your account, you may provide us with certain personal information (such as your name, address, Social Security number, financial information, account number, employee number, beneficiary’s name and contact information. ‎We may use your information to send you responses to your requests or to provide you with administrative information, such as notices related to your retirement benefits.

 

The Fund may share your information with ‎third-party service providers contracted to provide services on our behalf. These third-party service providers may use information we provide to them only as instructed by ‎us‎. ‎We may also disclose information to third parties if we have a good faith belief that such action is necessary to (a) conform to legal requirements or comply with legal processes; (b) enforce the Website Terms of Use; and/or (c) act to protect the interests of our users or others.

Tracking Technologies2

The Fund [or ‎our‎ service providers] may observe your activities, interactions, preferences, and other computer and connection information (such as an IP address) relating to your use of ‎our Website. We may collect and store this information and combine this information with other personal information provided to the Fund‎.

The Fund [and our service providers] use cookies [and other similar technologies, such as web beacons, local shared objects, tags, and scripts] on our Website and in email communications. We use these technologies to authenticate your access to various areas of our Website, understand your interests, analyze web traffic, combat fraud, and ensure that the Website remains available to all users. [In emails we send, we may use these technologies to track their effectiveness.]

[There are two types of cookies we use:

  1. Required. Required cookies and similar technologies enable basic features of the site to function and collect statistical information about visitors to our website to manage site usage. All of the information collected is aggregated and used anonymously. There are also some cookies that will enable a more personalized experience. But we will not use these cookies until you opt in to their functionality.


 

  1. Functional. Functional cookies allow our website to remember information you have entered or choices you make, and provide enhanced and more personal features based on your interaction with the site.]

[We collect generic information for analysis and statistical purposes. Specifically, We use log analysis tools to create summary statistics, which are used for purposes such as assessing what information is of most interest to users, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas. The following information is collected for this analysis:

  • User Client hostname – The hostname of the Internet provider of the user/client requesting access or the IP address if the Domain Name System (DNS) is disabled;

  • HTTP header, "user-agent" – The user-agent information includes the type of browser, its version, and the operating system on which it runs;

  • HTTP header, "referrer" – The referrer specifies the page from which the user accessed the current page;

  • System date – The date and time of the user request;

  • Full request – The exact request the user made;

  • Status – The status code the server returned to the user;

  • Content length – The content length, in bytes, of the document sent to the user;

  • Method – The request method used;

  • Universal Resource Identifier (URI) – The location of a resource on the server;

  • Query string of the URI – Anything after the question mark in a URI;

  • Protocol – The transport protocol and version used.]

Do Not Track

Without a common industry or legal standard for interpreting Do Not Track (DNT) signals, ‎the Fund does not respond to browser DNT signals.3 We will continue to monitor further development of a DNT standard by the privacy community and industry.

 

Security
‎The Fund employs reasonable and appropriate physical and logical security measures to protect personal information from loss, theft, misuse, unauthorized access, and unintentional disclosure, alteration, or destruction. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your password or other form of authentication involved in accessing the account portal on our Website. In order to protect you and your information, ‎we may suspend your use of our Website without notice, pending an investigation, if any security breach is suspected.

 

Changes to This Privacy Statement

We reserve the right to change, supplement, or update this Privacy Statement at any time. We will provide ‎notification of any material changes to this Privacy Statement through the Website prior to the changes taking ‎effect.‎

 

Contacting Us

You may reach us at retirement_fund@dallaserf.org. Alternatively you may reach us by addressing regular mail to the following address:

The Employees’ Retirement Fund of the City of Dallas
1920 McKinney Avenue, 10th Floor
Dallas, TX 75201