To conduct its business, USPS must collect various types of personally identifiable information about customers, employees and other individuals.
If you access or handle this kind of information as part of your postal job, you have a legal and ethical obligation to hold it in confidence and protect it from unauthorized disclosure and misuse.
Under the Privacy Act of 1974, a federal law, you must follow these rules of conduct:
• Never disclose the contents of any record or information about another individual to any person or organization without proper authorization. Managers must provide guidance to all employees who handle such information.
• Don’t maintain a secret system of records, such as a file, database or program that contains information about individuals. All records systems containing personally identifiable information about individuals must be reported to the Privacy and Records Management Office.
• Adhere strictly to the Postal Service’s established privacy policies and procedures to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of information about individuals that is collected, maintained and used for official USPS purposes.
To learn more about Postal Service policies and procedures governing the privacy of information, refer to Handbook AS-353, Guide to Privacy, the Freedom of Information Act, and Records Management and the USPS Privacy Policy.
To contact a Privacy and Records Management Office team member, send an email to privacy@usps.gov.