Privacy Policy

The Peace Corps is committed to protecting your privacy. We do not collect personally identifiable information (PII) about you when you visit our website unless you consent to provide such information to us.

Privacy Act Statement

The Privacy Act balances the Government’s need to maintain information about individuals with the rights of individuals to be protected against unwarranted invasions of their privacy.

See full statement

Privacy Act Statement for online application

The Peace Corps, an agency of the federal government, is required by the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a) to advise you of the following information regarding this application. The Privacy Act addresses the federal government’s use of certain personal information in agency files.

A. The Peace Corps online application for Volunteer service is authorized by the Peace Corps Act (22 U.S.C. 2501 et seq.) as amended, and Executive Order 9397, as amended (SSN use).
B. The information you provide will be used is to evaluate your suitability and qualifications to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
C. This information may be used for the routine uses described in the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, 5 U.S.C. 552a, and the Peace Corps' published routine uses, summarized in Peace Corps' System of Records PC-17 and PC-21. The information you provide on this form may be shared under the system of records routine uses described for law enforcement purposes or to an appropriate Federal, State, local, foreign agency; or Congressional office; to others who have a need to have access to the information in the performance of their duties or activities for the Peace Corps; and with other federal entities when there is a suspected or confirmed breach or compromise, as described in the Peace Corps' published general routine uses.

D. The applicant’s completion of this application is voluntary. However, the Peace Corps will be unable to assess your qualifications for volunteer service, and you may be precluded from consideration, if the agency does not receive your completed application.

E. The Peace Corps asks for your Social Security number because the Peace Corps Act, 22 U.S.C. 2519, requires the agency to do a background check on all Volunteers. The Peace Corps will also use it to ensure our records are accurate for tax and other financial accounting purposes. The agency is committed to ensuring that any personal information it receives is safeguarded against unauthorized disclosure.

Paperwork Reduction Act Burden Statement: Public reporting burden for the standard application information collection is estimated to average 1 hour. The burden for the expedited application information collection is 15 minutes. This includes the time for reviewing instructions and completing the information. This is voluntary information collection. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and persons are not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to: the FOIA Officer, Peace Corps, 1275 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20526.

Please note: The Peace Corps does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (over 40), disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, parental status, political affiliation, union membership, genetic information, or history of participation in the EEO process, any grievance procedure or any authorized complaint procedure. Anyone who feels he or she has been discriminated against should contact the Office of Civil Rights and Diversity, 202.692.2139, [email protected], 1275 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20526.

Privacy Act Statement for interview

Peace Corps Interview Privacy Act Statement The Peace Corps, an agency of the federal government, is required by the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a) to advise you of the following information regarding this interview. The Privacy Act addresses the federal government’s use of certain personal information in agency files. The interview is part of the application process for Peace Corps service.

A. This application is authorized by the Peace Corps Act (22 U.S.C. 2501 et seq.) as amended.

B. The interview will be used is to evaluate your suitability and qualifications to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

C. This information may be used for the routine uses described in the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a, and the Peace Corps' published Routine Uses, summarized in Peace Corps' System of Records.

D. The participation in and completion of this interview is voluntary. However, failure to participate in or to complete the interview will result in the Peace Corps being unable to assess your qualifications and may preclude your consideration for the Peace Corps.

Paperwork Reduction Act Statement: Public reporting burden for this information collection is estimated to average 90 minutes. The Peace Corps may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to: the FOIA Officer, Peace Corps, 1275 First Street NE, Washington, D.C. 20526 or [email protected].

Information collected and stored automatically

Peace Corps may collect certain information about you when you browse our websites. When you browse peacecorps.gov, Peace Corps, and in some cases our third-party service providers, will collect certain types of non-personal, public data (and metadata) in many ways, information about your visit to our website. This may include the following:

Domain from which you accessed the internet
IP address
Operating system for the device that you are using and information about the browser you used when visiting the site
Date and time of your visit
Pages you visited
Address of the website that connected you to peacecorps.gov (such as google.com)
Device type (desktop computer, tablet, or type of mobile device)
Screen resolution
Browser language
Geographic location
Time spent on page
Scroll depth (how much of a webpage was viewed)
User events (e.g., clicking a button)

Information collected for website improvement and customization (i.e., “cookies")

The Office of Management and Budget Memorandum 10-22, Guidance for Online Use of Web Measurement and Customization Technologies (June 25, 2010) [PDF], allows federal agencies to use session and persistent cookies to improve the delivery of services, and provides procedures, guidance and requirements for agency use of web measurement and customization technologies.

The Peace Corps uses cookies to collect information about users’ visits to our site. Use of these technologies makes our website function better for you and allows us to better understand how the public is using the website and to present relevant information to you based on your website browsing requests (also known as “retargeting”). The term "Cookies" are files placed on your hard drive by a website that store information regarding your use of that site, usually without your knowledge. We do not track your web activities beyond your browsing activities on the Peace Corps website. We do not cross-reference your browsing habits with other entities, and we do not sell or share your information to other entities.

The Peace Corps uses "session cookies,” also known as “Tier 1 web measurement and customization technologies,” and “persistent cookies,” also known as “Tier 2 web measurement and customization technologies.” These cookies do not collect personal information on users. Session cookies are stored in memory during an active browser session, and they are erased as soon as you close your browser after visiting our website. Persistent cookies can stay on your computer for longer periods of time unless you delete them.

The Peace Corps uses third-party analytics tools (currently Google Analytics) and pixel tags to collect and analyze anonymous statistical data. This data helps the Peace Corps meet user needs, understand web traffic patterns, and identify opportunities to improve the quality of the site. The Peace Corps uses anonymous, aggregated data for internal purposes and discloses it to Peace Corps employees and contractors who need to know the information in the performance of their official duties.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics uses a persistent cookie to store a unique, randomly assigned identifier for each user. The persistent cookie remains on users’ computers for two years or until it is deleted. Additionally, Google Analytics uses session cookies to facilitate sending data to Google Analytics. Google Analytics does not receive personally identifiable information through these cookies and does not combine, match, or cross-reference peacecorps.gov information with any other information. The data is automatically sent from your machine or device to the provider’s system, which immediately aggregates that data.

Google Analytics also gathers anonymous summary demographic information about our visitors such as gender, age range, and areas of interest for adults aged 18 or over. This information is collected by using Google Demographic and Interests reports. When you visit a website that has partnered with the Google Display Network, Google stores a number in your browser using a persistent cookie to remember your visits. This number uniquely identifies a web browser, not a specific person. Browsers may be associated with a demographic category, such as gender or age range, based on the sites that were visited. This demographic information is used to help us better understand our visitors' interests and needs to more effectively develop content to serve you.

ClickDimensions

The Peace Corps uses ClickDimensions to send emails, e-newsletters, alerts, calls-to-action and other messages to visitors who subscribe to them. To subscribe to a Peace Corps product, you must provide an email address and indicate your subscription preferences, including the items you want to receive. The email subscriber lists and all related information are kept in a secure on premise environment at Peace Corps that is both compliant with the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014, as amended (FISMA) and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program of 2011, as amended (FedRAMP). Information about FISMA can be found here, dhs.gov/fisma, and information about FedRAMP can be found here gsa.gov/portal/category/102371. Only the Peace Corps employees who send emails, e-newsletters, alerts, calls-to-action and other messages via ClickDimensions and staff members who monitor the results of ClickDimensions email initiatives have access to the subscriber lists. No one outside of Peace Corps personnel is allowed access to the subscriber lists and any related information. If you opt-in to any of our marketing emails, clicking on a link in any of these emails may cause you to be personally identified on Peace Corps’ site and may cause some part of your past browsing history on our site to be available to our personnel to determine your interests. If you do not wish for this tracking to occur, you can unsubscribe from our mailings or use private browsing mode to avoid tracking.

ClickDimensions uses a first party cookie to track visitor activity on Peace Corps’ websites. This may include information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable individual, including: name, interests, postal address, telephone number, or email address. If you fill out a web form on this site, your information will be stored in Peace Corps secured, on premise FISMA and FedRAMP compliant CRM system and some amount of your past browsing on this site may be available as part of your profile. However, if you use private browsing, you may provide Peace Corps your information without making your past browsing activity available to us. If you do not wish for Peace Corps to have your personal information, please do not fill out any of the web forms on this site. The ClickDimensions privacy policy is available at clickdimensions.com/about/privacy-policy.

Pixel tags

A pixel (also known as a web beacon) is a see-through graphic image (usually 1 pixel x 1 pixel) that is placed on a webpage and, in combination with a cookie, allows the collection of information regarding the use of the webpage. The Peace Corps uses conversion tracking to identify ads that are helpful to users and efficient for outreach. It enables peacecorps.gov to improve the performance of ads, while continuing to keep the personal identify of the user anonymous. Conversion tracking reports inform whether users who view or interact with an ad later visit a particular site or perform desired actions on that site. The Peace Corps uses summary-level conversion tracking reports that contain no personal identifiable information about users, to measure how effective advertisements are to our digital advertising outreach and education efforts. After visiting peacecorps.gov or interacting with ads, users may see ads for the Peace Corps on other sites through the use of “retargeting,” an advertising technique used by online advertisers to present ads to users who have previously visited a particular site. Users can click on the “AdChoices” Icon in the corner of Ads to opt-out of this Ad Targeting. Users who have set their browser to "Do Not Track" will automatically be opted out of conversion tracking. The content of external links to non-federal agency websites is not endorsed by the federal government and is not subject to federal information quality, privacy, security, and related guidelines. Any link that is not a federal .gov or .mil website is considered an external link.

Sending us an email

You also may decide to send us personally identifying information, for example, in an electronic mail message containing a question or comment, or by filling out a web form that provides us this information. We use personally identifiable information from email primarily to respond to your requests. We may forward your email to other Peace Corps employees who are better able to answer your questions. We may also use your email to contact you in the future about Peace Corps programs that may be of interest.

We want to be very clear: We will not obtain personally identifiable information about you when you visit our site unless you choose to provide such information to us. Providing such information is strictly voluntary. Except as might be required by law, we do not share any information we receive with any outside parties.

If you sign up for one of our email lists, we'll only send you the kinds of information you've requested. We will not share your name or email address with any outside parties.

Opt out or change your contact information

Our website provides users the opportunity to opt out of receiving communications from us and to be removed from our database systems. This option may also be used to change or modify information that you previously provided to us. If you want to opt out of receiving communications from us or to change your information, please contact us via email or by using the information below. See more information on opt-out instructions at usa.gov.

Questions about our policies

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this website, contact us:

Peace Corps
Privacy Office
1275 First Street NE
Washington, DC 20526
855.855.1961

Take the next step.