Privacy and Security
The Defense.gov website is provided as a public service by the Office
of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs
.
Information presented on this website is considered public information
and may be distributed or copied unless otherwise specified. Use of
appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested.

If you choose to provide us with personal information -- like filling out a
Contact Us form with email and/or postal addresses -- we only use
that information to respond to your message or request. We will only
share the information you give us with another government agency if
your inquiry relates to that agency, or as otherwise required by law.
We never create individual profiles or give it to any private
organizations. Defense.gov never collects information for commercial
marketing. While you must provide an email address or postal address
for a response other than those generated automatically in response
to questions or comments that you may submit, we recommend that
you NOT include any other personal information, especially Social
Security numbers. The Social Security Administration offers additional
guidance on sharing your Social Security number.

We maintain a variety of physical, electronic and procedural
safeguards to protect your personal information. For site security
purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users,
this government computer system employs software programs to
monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or
change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Except for authorized law enforcement investigations, no other
attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits.
Raw data logs are used for no other purposes and are scheduled for
regular destruction in accordance with National Archives and Records
Administration guidelines.

Unauthorized attempts to upload information or change information on
this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable under the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the National Information
Infrastructure Protection Act.

If you have any questions or comments about the information
presented here, please forward them to us using our Contact Us page.

Use of Measurement and Customization Technology:

This website uses measurement and customization technology known
as a "cookies". Cookies are used to remember a user's online
interactions with a website or online application to conduct
measurement and analysis of usage or to customize the user's
experience.

Two kinds of cookies are used on this website. A single-session
cookie (Tier 1) is a line of text that is stored temporarily on a user's
computer and deleted as soon as the browser is closed. A persistent
or multisession cookie (Tier 2) is saved to a file on a user's hard drive
and is called up the next time that user visits a website. Use of these
cookies does not involve the collection of a visitor's personally
identifiable information.

The Defense Department does not use the information associated
with cookies to track individual user activity on the internet outside
DoD websites, nor does it share the data obtained through such
technologies, without the user's explicit consent, with other
departments or agencies. DoD does not keep a database of
information obtained from the use of cookies.

Cookies are enabled by default to optimize website functionality and
customize user experience. Users can choose not to accept the use of
these cookies by changing the settings on their local computer's web
browser. The USA.gov website, https://www.usa.gov/optout-
instructions
, provides general instructions on how to opt out of cookies
and other commonly used web measurement and customization
technologies. Opting out of cookies still permits users to access
comparable information and services; however, it may take longer to
navigate or interact with the website if a user is required to fill out
certain information repeatedly.

Specific Technologies/Vendors:

Tier 1 cookies are used for technical purposes to improve a user
experience and to allow users to more easily navigate the website.

Akamai speeds the delivery of content and applications for customers
through using automatic, intermediate and temporary information
storage to make the onward transmission of that information to other
recipients more efficient. Temporary storage processes retain
information only as long as is reasonably necessary to transmit the
data. Intermediate storage processes retain information only so long
as is reasonably necessary for continued transmission, to maintain the
security of the network and the data, to monitor and improve website
performance and for related administrative purposes. Akamai does not
collect, use or disclose personally identifiable consumer information.

Foresee Results software measures user satisfaction and assesses
website effectiveness through optional surveys presented to website
visitors. The information gathered from these surveys is used to
identify and prioritize improvements to functional website elements
and content for visitors. Survey users provide ratings and feedback
related to a series of questions about website performance,
aesthetics, usability, user experience, and so forth; however, users
are not required to provide any personal information. Tier 2 cookies
are used to remember if the user has already been offered the survey
and to ensure that users are prompted only once every 60 days.

Urchin software collects aggregate statistics of website visitor
characteristics, traffic, and activity. This information is used to assess
what content is of most and least interest, determine technical design
specifications, and identify system performance or problem areas. The
software records a variety of data, including IP addresses (the
locations of computers or networks on the internet), unique visits,
page views, hits, referring websites and what hyperlinks have been
clicked. Tier 2 cookies are used to distinguish between summary
statistics for users who have been to the site before and those that are
visiting the site the for the first time. The Defense Department does
not gather, request, record, require, collect or track any internet user's
personally identifiable information through these processes.

Client side opt-out mechanisms allow the user to opt out of web
measurement and customization technologies by changing the
settings of a specific application or program on the user's local
computer. For example, users may be able to disable persistent
cookies by changing the settings on commonly used web browsers.
For general instructions on how to opt out of some of the most
commonly used web measurements and customization technologies,
go to https://www.usa.gov/optout-instructions.

Use of Third-Party Websites and Applications

Third-party websites and applications that are not owned, operated, or
controlled by the Defense Department are integral to internet-based
operations across DoD and used to augment official communication.
These capabilities include, but are not limited to, networking services,
media sharing services, wikis and data mashups. A list of DoD's
authorized pages and uses of these services is available
at https://dod.defense.gov/About/Military-Departments/DoD-Websites/.
These sites may collect personally identifiable information and may
make it available to the DoD and other users; however, the
information is not collected on behalf of, nor is it provided specifically
for DoD. DoD does not harvest and additionally collect, maintain,
share or otherwise use such personally identifiable information for any
purpose other than that for which it is made available to all users.