Information on the BDS-US Privacy Policy

In order to respond to customers' needs, the MOD website uses a statistical analysis service that helps us to understand what you find interesting and useful on our website. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to collect cookie information when you visit the site.

The Ministry of Defence website does not store or capture personal information, but merely logs the user's IP address which is automatically recognised by the web server. Our log files do not contain any personal information or information about which other sites you have visited. This general information does not personally identify you and we will not collect or store any information about you except that required for system administration of the web server.

In addition, you can decline our cookie by adjusting the "accept cookies" setting on your browser, however this may affect the functionality of the MOD website.

Other websites linked from this site do not necessarily follow the same policies. Further information on your rights under the Data Protection Act 1998 can be found on the Information Commissioner's website.

Glossary

Cookie
Message given to a browser program by a web server. The message is then stored by the browser in a text file. Each time the browser requests a page from the server, this message is sent back. A cookie's main objective is to identify users and personalise their visit by customising web pages for them for example by welcoming them by name next time they visit the same site. A site using cookies will usually invite you to provide personal information such as your name, e-mail address and interests. In our case, however, we do not use cookies for this purpose.

IP address
Every machine connecting to the Internet has a four-number address (e.g. 146.9.80.88), which may or may not stay constant between sessions online. Many web users connect indirectly to the Internet via an intermediary (proxy) server.

Log files
Every time our web site is accessed an entry is made in the web server's log file. This tells us broadly where an access is coming from, when it was made, which file was requested and whether the request was successful or not. It usually does not allow us to identify individual users. The data is used to assess usage levels and spot technical problems (such as broken pages or web server errors).

Web server
The machine which on which the MOD website is physically located, which delivers (serves up) web pages to your computer.