WRAIR Website Privacy and Security Terms of Use

Privacy and Security

1. WRAIR websites are provided as a public service by the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command* and the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Information Management, located on Fort Detrick, MD.
2. Information presented on this website is considered public information and may be distributed or copied. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested.
3. To aid in 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 General Schedule 20 globe4.gif. All data collection activities are in strict accordance with DoD Directive 5240.1 globe4.gif (reference (p)).
6. 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 1987 and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.
7. If you have any questions or comments about the information presented here, please forward them to wrair.webmaster@amedd.army.mil.
8. Cookie Disclaimer. The WRAIR website does not use persistent cookies, i.e., tokens that pass information back and forth from your computer to the server and remain after you close your browser. WRAIR websites do use session cookies, i.e. tokens that remain active only until you close your browser, for site management and 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.
9. Session cookies are temporary cookies that are used to maintain context or "state" between otherwise stateless web transactions and that are deleted at the end of the web session in which they are created. No database of information obtained from these cookies is kept and when you close your browser, the cookie is deleted from your computer.
10. You can choose not to accept these cookies and still use the site. The help information in your browser software should provide you with instruction on how to disable cookies.

Information Collected from WRAIR's Website for Statistical Purposes

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 /news/ 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 requester'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 /news/ HTTP/1.0" -- this is the location of the requested file on WRAIR

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 WRAIR

Requests for other types of documents use similar information. No other user-identifying information is collected.

The Privacy Act provides a number of protections for your personal information. These typically include how information is collected, used, disclosed, stored, and disposed. Any information contained herein is subject to OPM/GOVT-2, DoDD 5400.11 and DoD 5400.11-R guidance.