The Department of Defense announced today the continued suspension of the Any Servicemember mail program. Accordingly, the general public is urged not to send unsolicited mail, care packages or donations to service members during the holiday season.

During this time of the year, the number of donation programs increases and causes mail from families and friends to be mixed with mail from unknown sources resulting in delivery delays.

DoD continues to emphasize that names and addresses of military service members must not be distributed by the media, Web sites, companies, non-profit organizations, schools and individuals for the purpose of collecting letters of support or donations for mailing to service members.

Service members should receive mail only from those friends and family members to whom they personally give their address.

Military addresses should not be passed around by family members for use by donation programs. Unknown mailers could then obtain those addresses and mail harmful items to service members.

For these reasons, DoD continues to indefinitely suspend general donation programs from unknown mailers.

Americans, who dont have loved ones deployed overseas, can still show support during the holidays by other means.

A list of these programs is available at http:// www.defendamerica.mil .

To guarantee mail arrives in time for end of year holidays, family members are encouraged to view the mailing guidelines at http:// www.usps.com/cpim/ftp/bulletin/2004/pb22138.pdf .