Privacy Policy

Your privacy is important. To protect privacy, we provide this notice to explain our online information practices and the choices you can make about how your information is collected and used.

We gather personal and company information from users of Illinois workNet to track usage of our online materials, and thus, we can improve the relationship between ​job seekers, employers, state agencies, and service providers. Occasionally, we seek comments from individuals on services offered. These comments help us to determine how to improve our services.

Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) / Illinois workNet Portal® Privacy Notice

LEGAL NOTICES
Access to the Illinois workNet portal website is subject to the following terms and conditions. Please read these terms carefully, as use of these sites constitutes acceptance of the following terms and conditions.

PREAMBLE
Under the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of government, it is declared to be the public policy of the State of Illinois that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts and policies of those who represent them as public officials and public employees. Access to this information is not intended to violate individual privacy, further a commercial enterprise, or disrupt the duly undertaken work of any public body independent of fulfilling any of the rights of the people to access information.

PRIVACY NOTICE
Information collected and received through the Illinois workNet portal (DCEO) may become public record and, therefore, subject to disclosure under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. It is, therefore the policy of the State of Illinois that no personal information you provide to us, including, but not limited to, your name, address, telephone number, driver's license number, Social Security Number, and email address, will be sold or rented to any entity or individual or disclosed to any unauthorized entity or individual. The release of personal information by the departments under the control of the Governor shall be limited, according to Illinois law, to the State of Illinois government agencies and/or to authorized department contractors or grantees.

This Privacy Notice applies to the use of the DCEO Illinois workNet portal and any portals or website subsidiaries of the Illinois DCEO used in conducting business. It does not apply to information collected by the Illinois DCEO while exercising its legislative mandate through filing applications, forms, and/or petitions, correspondence, and emails directed to the Illinois DCEO or any information subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

The information we receive from your visit to our website(s) depends on the category of services you use and the information you reveal during your visit. Visit categories include general browsing, searching, online complaint, and survey forms, and the use of “Business Portals.” No personal information is collected, stored, or distributed due to your visit to our public website or public non-authenticated use of “Business portals” or website subsidiaries.

PERSONAL INFORMATION AND CHOICE
"Personal information" is information about an individual that is readily identifiable to that specific individual. Personal information includes but is not limited to, personal identifiers such as an individual's name, address, phone number, driver’s license number,​ and Social Security Number. A domain name or Internet Protocol address is not considered personal information. We collect no personal information about you unless you voluntarily participate in an activity that asks for information (e.g., sending an email or participating in a survey). If personal information is requested or volunteerly provided, the Illinois Personal Information Protection Act and the Federal Privacy Act of 1974 may protect it. However, this information is a public record once you provide it and may be subject to public inspection and copying if not protected by federal or state law.

POLICIES FOR INDIVIDUALS UNDER 13 YEARS OF AGE
The State of Illinois is committed to complying fully with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. Accordingly, if you are under 13, you are not authorized to provide us with personally identifying information, and we will not use any such information in our database or other data collection activities. We appreciate your cooperation with this federally mandated requirement. Users are cautioned that the collection of personal information volunteered by children online or by email will be treated the same as information given by an adult and may be subject to public access.
 
WEB LOGS
The Illinois DCEO and Southern Illinois University Carbondale analyze our website logs to continually improve the value of the materials available on our site. Our website logs are not personally identifiable.

INFORMATION RETAINED AND HOW IT IS USED FOR ANONYMOUS USERS 
As an anonymous user browsing the Illinois workNet portal, printing, and downloading information, no personally identifying information will be revealed or recorded about you. Our web server logs collect and store only the following general information about your visit:
  • ​The domain and name of the service provider from which you accessed our website. The domain indicates what type of service provider you are connecting from, e.g., a commercial carrier, governmental entity, or university. The service provider's name tells us which provider you use without disclosing ​your personal information.
  • The date, time of the visit, and the pages viewed are identified only by the Internet address of your service provider, the Internet address of the website from which you linked directly to us, and the type of browser used. No name, address, email address, or personal information is collected.
  • The type of web browser used (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.). Web pages do not always display the same on every type or version of web browser and thus must be coded for appropriate access.
This information is used to prepare summary statistics on the most frequently visited and least frequently visited pages to help us decide which content is the most useful to our visitors. This information is used solely to help us improve our online services by determining how often our website is visited and which areas of the site are visited most to gauge overall interest. Our office exclusively uses all information; none of the information we collect is disclosed to third parties except as may be required to fulfill a request made under the Freedom of Information Act.

CORRESPONDENCE
If, while visiting DCEO's Illinois workNet portal, you participate in a survey or send an email, the following additional information will be collected:
  • Email Correspondence: The email address and contents of the email. We may use your email to respond appropriately. This may be to respond to you, to address issues you identify, to improve our website further, or to forward the email to another agency for appropriate action.
  • Survey Responses: Currently, survey responses are completely anonymous. No specific information is collected other than survey answers and any information you volunteer in the comments area. However, any information you volunteered in response to a survey is used for the purpose designated. The information collected is not limited to text characters and may include audio, video, and graphic formats you provided.

ANONYMOUS SEARCHING
You must have per-session cookies enabled to utilize our website's search capabilities. Our web server software issues a temporary session cookie that is deleted when you close your browser. This cookie is necessary to keep track of your search criteria and which page of the search results you are viewing to enable navigation through the search results. No personal information is stored in the cookie, and nothing about the cookie is maintained on our website ​after you close the browser session.

See your browser documentation for directions on how to enable and disable cookies. Per-session cookies are used to store state information only within a session. These cookies are cached only while a user is visiting the web server issuing the per-session cookies and are deleted from the cache when the user closes the session. No personal information is stored or collected by our website through the use of per-session cookies. Per-session cookies are used by Active Server Pages (ASP) running on Microsoft Internet Information Server or as per-session cookies running as a “dotnet” application. These cookies store session information as the user navigates to multiple ASP pages on a site.

AUTHENTICATED APPLICATIONS
Authenticated Applications at the Illinois workNet portal do not allow anonymous users to enter information. Authenticated applications require an Illinois workNet provided user ID and password to enter information. Authenticated applications enable the Illinois workNet portal to collect electronic information while exercising its legislative mandate through filing applications, forms, and/or petitions, correspondence, and emails directed to the Illinois DCEO or any information subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

ACCESS OF INFORMATION COLLECTED
No personally identifying information is collected unless you are specifically prompted for such information. Information submitted via survey forms or online complaints cannot later be viewed or altered; however, information collected when authenticated to our system through an Illinois workNet portal provided a user ID and password can be reviewed and corrected by logging back in and changing the information.

SECURITY OF INFORMATION COLLECTED
When you enter personally identifying information, it is collected through a secure encrypted tunnel. Storage of this information is secured in a system with a user ID and password.

Southern Illinois University Carbondale, for the Illinois DCEO, as developer, and administrator of this website, has taken several steps to safeguard the integrity of its communications and computing infrastructure, including but not limited to authentication, monitoring, auditing, and encryption. Security measures have been integrated into the design, implementation, and day-to-day practices of the Illinois workNet portal operating environment as part of its continuing commitment to risk management.

DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY
Neither the DCEO nor its employees shall be held liable for any improper or incorrect use of the information described and/or contained herein and assumes no responsibility for anyone's use of the information. In no event shall the DCEO Illinois workNet portal or its employees be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement or substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this system, even if advised of the possibility of such damage. This disclaimer of liability applies to any damages or injury, including but not limited to those caused by any failure of performance, error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, computer virus, communication line failure, theft, or destruction or unauthorized access to, alteration of, or use of record, whether for breach of contract, tortuous behavior, negligence or under any other cause of action.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES AND ACCURACY OF DATA
Although the data found using the Illinois workNet portal access systems have been produced and processed from sources believed to be reliable, no warranty, expressed or implied, is made regarding the accuracy, adequacy, completeness, legality, reliability, or usefulness of any information. This disclaimer applies to both isolated and aggregate uses of the information. The DCEO provides this information on an "as is" basis. All warranties, express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, freedom from contamination by computer viruses, and non-infringement of proprietary rights, are disclaimed. Changes may be periodically made to the information herein; these changes may or may not be incorporated into any new publication version. If you have obtained information from any Illinois workNet portal web pages from a source other than the Illinois workNet portal pages, be aware that electronic data can be altered after original distribution. Data can also quickly become out of date. It is recommended that careful attention be paid to the contents of any data associated with a file and that the originator of the data or information be contacted with any questions regarding appropriate use. If you find any errors or omissions, we encourage you to report them to the DCEO-CIM via email.

DISCLAIMER OF ENDORSEMENT
The Illinois DCEO is a distributor of content sometimes supplied by third parties and users. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including information providers, users, or others, are those of the respective author(s) or distributor(s) and do not necessarily state or reflect those of the DCEO and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the DCEO.

DISCLAIMER OF EXTERNAL LINKS
The Illinois workNet portal contains links to related World Wide Web sites and resources. The DCEO is not responsible for the contents of any off-site pages referenced. These sites and resources have privacy policies that may differ from that of Illinois workNet, and for your protection, we recommend that you read and understand the privacy policy at any website before providing personal information on that website. The user specifically acknowledges that the DCEO is not liable for the defamatory, offensive, or illegal conduct of other users, links, or third parties and that the risk of injury from the foregoing rests entirely with the user. Links from the Illinois workNet portal web pages on the World Wide Web to other sites do not constitute an endorsement from the DCEO. These links are provided as an information service only. The web surfer is responsible for evaluating the content and usefulness of information obtained from other sites. Since the Illinois workNet portal is not responsible for the availability of these outside resources or their contents, you should direct any concerns regarding any external link to its site administrator or Webmaster.

DISCLAIMER OF DUTY TO CONTINUE PROVISION OF DATA
Due to the dynamic nature of the Internet, resources that are free and publicly available one day may require a fee or restricted access the next, and the location of items may change as menus, home pages, and files are reorganized. The user expressly agrees that using the Illinois workNet portal is at the user's sole risk. The DCEO does not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free. The documents and related graphics published on this server could contain technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically added to the information herein. The State and/or its respective agencies and programs may make improvements and/or changes in the information and/or programs described herein at any time.

CHOICE OF LAW
Construction of the disclaimers above and resolution of disputes thereof are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois. The laws of the State of Illinois, U.S.A., shall apply to all uses of this data and this system. By use of this system and any data contained therein, the user agrees that the laws of the State of Illinois shall apply; venue shall be vested in the courts of Illinois; use shall conform to all applicable laws and regulations of the State of Illinois; and user shall not violate the rights of any third parties.

This information should not be construed as giving business, legal, or other advice or warranting as fail-proof the security of information provided via Illinois DCEO-supported​ websites.

This privacy notice applies to all Illinois DCEO URLs, including the Illinois workNet portal.​​