The Town of Queen Creek does not sell, trade or rent your personal information to others. The Town of Queen Creek may provide aggregate statistics about our customers, traffic patterns and related site information to other government agencies, but these statistics will include no personal identifying information. The Town of Queen Creek may release account information when we believe, in good faith, that such release is reasonably necessary to (i) comply with law, (ii) enforce or apply the terms of any of our user agreements or (iii) protect the rights, property or safety of the Town of Queen Creek, our users or others.

By using the Town of Queen Creek’s Web site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by the Town of Queen Creek. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you always have the opportunity to be aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.

The technical term for tracking a visitor on a Web site is "Cookies." Some maintain that cookies, in any form, are bad. We agree that they can be bad, however, there are important technical reasons to use cookies in limited situations, and the Queen Creek Web site does use cookies in a limited manner as stated below.

It is important to understand what a cookie is and how it works in order to understand how and why we use it. When someone visits a Web site, they are requesting a page of information, and that information is sent to their browser, and their connection to the Web site is then broken within seconds. The Web site has no record of who just received the page. For most visits this is fine. This is a transaction that does not require cookies and is the most common.

A cookie is a very small file that is stored on the visiting user’s computer by their browser when requested by the Web server. For example, if you are using Web pages that are more sophisticated than standard pages, the Web server might need a way to determine one user from another. Remember, you are only connected for a few seconds and hundreds of others might be served before you get your next page from the server.

Let’s take an example of a multi-page form on the Web. As you fill in one form and move on to the next, the server will need a way to remember where you are in the form process, and what previous forms you have filled in so that it can keep them together. When you submit page one, there is a cookie stored on your computer with a temporary id tag and a marker saying what Web server gave it to you. This cookie will not have any personal information and takes less space on your hard drive than one line in this document. Now, as you bring up page two, the server asks your browser if you have a cookie, and that id tag information is sent to the server, thus reminding it who you are – as opposed to the other 100 people filling out the same form at the same time. This process basically keeps you in a personal exchange with the server.

If you have ever purchased something over the Web, the vendor uses cookies to keep track of you, and from that they can track what you have already selected in your shopping cart.

Cookies can also be used for more devious things. Tracking how many times you specifically come to a Web site for example. Tracking what pages you visit while you are at that site. These are tracking your behavior, and this is considered bad.

The Town will not use cookies, or any other technology, to track individuals on our Web site. The only exception, as stated in the example above, would be to keep transactions open between the server and user during a session with an application. Those sessions usually expire 20 minutes after the last Web page access, and in many cases, it’s never actually stored as a cookie file and expires as soon as the browser is closed.

E-mail as well as certain other documents in the Town may be considered public record. E-mail sent to the mayor and Town Council members is automatically forwarded to the media by their request. Also, e-mail sent to the Town of Queen Creek, whether to Town Staff, Council, etc. is subject to review, per Chapter 1 of ARS 39, which can be found online.

The Town of Queen Creek welcomes your questions and comments about the privacy policy. Please send e-mail to  Communication@QueenCreekAZ.gov.