1. www.southcom.mil is provided as a public service by the US Southern Command.
2. Information presented on www.southcom.mil is considered public information and may be distributed or copied unless otherwise specified. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested.
3. Privacy Act Statement - If you choose to provide us with personal information – like filling out a Contact Us form with e-mail 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. www.southcom.mil never collects information for commercial marketing. While you must provide an e-mail address or postal address for a response other than those generated automatially 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.
4. For site management, information is collected for statistical purposes. This government computer system uses software programs to create summary statistics, which are used for such purposes as assessing what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. If you have any questions or comments about the information presented here, please forward them to us using the www.southcom.mil "Contact Us" page.
Use of Measurement and Customization Technology
Cookie Disclaimer - www.southcom.mil does not use persistent cookies (persistent tokens that pass information back and forth from the client machine to the server). www.southcom.mil may use session cookies (tokens that remain active only until you close your browser) in order to make the site easier to use. The Department of Defense DOES NOT keep a database of information obtained from these cookies.
You can choose not to accept these cookies and still use the site, but it may take you longer to fill out the same information repeatedly and clicking on the banners will not take you to the correct link. Refer to the help information in your browser software for instructions on how to disable cookies.
Below is an example of the information collected based on a standard request for a World Wide Web document:
xxx.yyy.com - - [28/Jan/1997:00:00:01 -0500]
"GET /sitename/news/nr012797.html HTTP/1.0" 200 16704
Mozilla 3.0/www.altavista.digital.com
xxx.yyy.com (or 123.123.23.12) -- this is the host name (or IP address) associated with the requester (you as the visitor). In this case, (....com) the requester is coming from a commercial address. Depending on the requestor´s method of network connection, the host name (or IP address) may or may not identify a specific computer. Connections via many Internet Service Providers assign different IP addresses for each session, so the host name identifies only the ISP. The host name (or IP address) will identify a specific computer if that computer has a fixed IP address.
[28/Jan/1997:00:00:01 -0500] -- this is the date and time of the request
"GET /sitename/news/nr012797.html HTTP/1.0" -- this is the location of the requested file
200 -- this is the status code - 200 is OK - the request was filled
16704 -- this is the size of the requested file in bytes
Mozilla 3.0 -- this identifies the type of browser software used to access the page, which indicates what design parameters to use in constructing the pages
www.altavista.digital.com -- this indicates the last site the person visited, which indicates how people find this site
Requests for other types of documents use similar information. No other user-identifying information is collected.
Third-Party Websites:
Third-party websites and applications that are not owned, operated, or controlled by the Department of Defense are integral to Internet-based operations across the Department of Defense and used to augment official communication. These capabilities include, but are not limited to, networking services, media sharing services, wikis and data mashups. US Southern Command third-party sites can be found at http://www.southcom.mil/pages/SOUTHCOM-Social-Media.aspx.
These sites may collect PII and may make it available to the Department of Defense and other users; however, the PII is not collected on behalf of, nor is it provided specifically for, the Department of Defense. We do not harvest and additionally collect, maintain, share or otherwise use such PII for any purpose other than that for which it is made available to all users.
The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the United States Department of Defense of the linked web sites, or the information, products or services contained therein. For other than authorized activities such as military exchanges and Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) sites, the United States Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations.