The U.S. Navy website, www.navy.mil, is provided as a public service by the U.S. Navy's Office of Information, Washington, D.C.
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 your personally identifiable information (PII), such as filling out a form to contact the U.S. Navy with e-mail and/or postal addresses, your information will only be used to respond to your message or request. The information you provide will only be shared with another government agency if your inquiry relates to that agency, or as otherwise required by law. Individual profiles will not be created nor given to any private organizations. Navy.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 automatically in response to questions or comments that you may submit, we recommend that you NOT include any other PII, especially Social Security numbers. The Social Security Administration offers additional guidance on sharing your Social Security number.
The U.S. Navy maintains a variety of physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect your PII. 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 through our contact U.S. Navy form.
What is a Cookie? Whenever you visit a website the website sends a small piece of information called a cookie along with the webpage. The main purpose of a cookie is to identify and customize webpages for you.
There are two kinds of cookies. A session cookie (Tier 1) is a line of text that is stored temporarily in your computer’s random access memory (RAM). A session cookie is never written to a drive, and it is destroyed as soon as you close your browser.
A persistent cookie (Tier 2) from a website is saved to a file on your hard drive and is called up the next time you visit that website. This allows the website to remember what you were interested in the last time you visited.
The U.S. Navy does not use the information associated with cookies to track individual user activity on the Internet outside U.S. Navy websites, nor does it share the data obtained through such technologies with other departments or agencies without the user’s explicit consent. The U.S. Navy does not keep a database of information obtained from the use of cookies. Use of these cookies does not involve the collection of a visitor's PII.
Navy.mil creates a session cookie when you visit and destroys it as soon as you close your browser.
Akamai is a service that software 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 so 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, for related administrative purposes. Akamai does not collect, use, or disclose PII.
Foresee Results survey 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 an improved visitor experience. Survey participants provide ratings and feedback related to a series of questions about website performance, aesthetics, usability, and the user experience; however, participants are not required to provide any PII. 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 which hyperlinks have been clicked.
Google Analytics as configured on navy.mil also uses first-party (persistent) cookies to:
- Distinguish unique users (cookies will remain on your computer for up to 2 years unless you clear the cookies)
- Throttle the request rate (last for up to 1 minute)
Google Analytics collects and stores information about your visit to our site. This information includes:
- Environmental information such as the geographic location of your IP address, the language you are browsing in, and the technical specifications of the device and browser you are browsing on;
- Behavioral information such as the date and time of your visit, the pages you visit, links you clicked on the site, and the name of the domain from which you access the Internet (i.e., DoD.gov if you are connecting from a DoD account, or GMU.edu if you are connecting from George Mason University’s domain); and
- "Acquisition" information such as the Internet address of the website you came from if it linked you directly to www.navy.mil and search terms that you enter into the GSA.gov search tool.
To learn more about how Google Analytics safeguards data (link to Commercial Site)
If you don't want to accept cookies, you can edit your browser's options to stop accepting persistent cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit. Here's how you can disable cookies and/or Google Demographic and Interests reports (links to external site). Although using persistent cookies allows us to deliver a better experience for you, this site will work without them.
While the U.S. Navy uses social media including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, no PII is sought or provided to the U.S. Navy as a result of our use of these platforms.
Third-party websites and applications that are not owned, operated, or controlled by the U.S. Navy are integral to Internet-based operations across the U.S. Navy 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 the U.S. Navy’s authorized pages and uses of these services is listed at http://www.navy.mil/CommandDirectory.asp. These third-party sites may collect PII and may make it available to the U.S. Navy and other users; however, the PII is not collected on behalf of, nor is it provided specifically for, the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy does 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.