MHOH Privacy Policy

This policy covers personally identifiable information collected from Members and stored by Military Hall of Honor (hereafter "MHOH") on its servers in relation to allowing Members to have creation and editing privileges on Honoree Records. MHOH collects and retains the least amount of personally identifiable information needed to safely allow Members to edit the Records.

Records are Collaboratively Created
The Honoree Records are collaboratively developed by MHOH and its Members using the MHOH website. Any MHOH member with Internet access (who is not otherwise restricted from doing so) may edit the information in the Records. By doing this, Members create a record of every word they add, subtract, or change. This is a public act, and editors are identified publicly as the author of such changes. All contributions made to a Record, and all publicly available information about those contributions, are irrevocably licensed and may be freely copied, quoted, reused and adapted by third parties with few restrictions.

Member Accounts and Authorship
MHOH limits editorial rights for Records to Members only. Members are identified by their chosen username. Members select a password, which is confidential and used to verify the integrity of their account. Except insofar as it may be required by law, no person should disclose, or knowingly expose, Member passwords. Once created, Member accounts will not be removed. It may be possible for a Member username to be changed, but MHOH does not guarantee that a username will be changed on request.

Purpose of Collecting Private Information
MHOH limits the collection of personally identifiable Member data to purposes which serve the well-being of its Records, including but not limited to the following:

To enhance the public accountability of the Records. MHOH recognizes that any system that is open enough to allow the greatest possible participation by large numbers of Members will also be vulnerable to certain kinds of abuse and counterproductive behavior. MHOH has established a number of mechanisms to prevent or remedy abusive activities. For example, when investigating abuse on a Record, including the suspected use of malicious "sockpuppets" (duplicate accounts), vandalism, harassment of other Members, or disruptive behavior, the IP addresses of Members (derived either from those logs or from records in the database) may be used to identify the source(s) of the abusive behavior. This information may be shared by any Members with administrative authority who are charged with protecting the Records.

To provide site statistics. MHOH statistically samples raw log data from Members' visits. These logs are used to produce the site statistics pages; the raw log data is not made public.

To solve technical problems. Log data may be examined by developers in the course of solving technical problems and in tracking down badly-behaved web spiders that overwhelm the site.

Details of Data Retention

IP and other Technical Information
When a Visitor requests or reads a page, or sends email to a MHOH server, no more information is collected than is typically collected by web sites. MHOH may keep raw logs of such transactions, but these will not be published or used to track legitimate Visitors.

When a page is edited by a logged-in Member, the server confidentially stores related IP information.

Cookies
The MHOH site does not use cookies for Visitors or Members. When a Member logs in, a 'session variable' is created. It contains all the necessary information for a Member to use the MHOH software. When the Member logs out, the 'session variable' is deleted in its entirety.

Record History
Edits or other contributions to a Record by Members are generally retained forever. Removing text from a Record does not permanently delete it. Normally, in Records, any Member can look at a previous version of a Record and see what was there. Even if a Record is "deleted" a Member entrusted with a higher level of access may still see what was removed from public view. Information can be permanently deleted by individuals with access to MHOH servers, but aside from the rare circumstance when MHOH is required to delete editing-history material in response to a court order or equivalent legal process, there is no guarantee any permanent deletion will happen.

Member Contributions
Member contributions are also aggregated and publicly available. Data on Member contributions, such as the times at which Members edited and the number of edits they have made, are publicly available via Member contributions lists, and in aggregated forms published by other Members.

Reading Records
No more information on Visitors reading pages is collected than is typically collected in server logs by web sites. Aside from the above raw log data collected for general purposes, page visits do not expose a Visitor's identity publicly. Sampled raw log data may include the IP address of any user, but it is not reproduced publicly.

Editing Records
Edits to Records are identified with the username or network IP address of the editor, and editing history is aggregated by author in a contribution list. Such information will be available permanently on the Records.

There will be two roles possible for every Service Member Record that is created:

  1. Creator- The MHOH Member who originally created the record
  2. Editor- MHOH Member(s) who add/change subsequent information to the original record.

In addition, every created record will have three status levels that can be set:

  1. Unmonitored- Any subsequent change/addition to the original record is immediately allowed.
  2. Notice Only- Any subsequent change/addition to the original record is immediately allowed, and the Creator is notified of such.
  3. Moderated- Any subsequent change to the original record is delayed for 24 hours, the Creator is notified any changes/additions, and can approve or object to them. If no action is taken within the 24 hour period, the change/addition will be populated to the record. If a Creator approves the change/addition before the 24 hour period has elapsed, the change/addition is immediately populated to the record. If an Objection is made, a notice will be sent to the Editor who had made the Change/Addition, advising of the objection, and will then be given the opportunity to appeal to an MHOH administrator, to adjudicate whether or not the change/addition would be in the best interest of the Service Member record. The MHOH Administrators have the final authority over all disputes regarding Service Member records.

An MHOH Member may only create, change or make additions to 10 records maximum per day. MHOH administrators may grant certain MHOH Members privileges above this limit upon request.

Logged in Member
Logged in Members do not expose their IP address to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of a Record page by the Member or by another Member with the same IP address. A Member's IP address is stored on the MHOH servers for a period of time, during which it can be seen by server administrators and by users who have been granted CheckUser access.

Release of Personally Identifiable Information

Release: Policy on Release of Data

It is the policy of MHOH that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, or through other non-publicly-available methods, may be released by MHOH in any of the following situations:

  1. In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement,
  2. With permission of the affected Member,
  3. When necessary for investigation of abuse complaints,
  4. Where the information pertains to page views generated by a spider or bot and its dissemination is necessary to illustrate or resolve technical issues,
  5. Where the Member has been vandalizing articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to a service provider, carrier, or other third-party entity to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers,
  6. Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the Military Hall of Honor, it's Members or the public.

Except as described above, MHOH policy does not permit distribution of personally identifiable information under any circumstances.

Third-party Access and Notifying Members When Legal Process is Received:

As a general principle, the access to, and retention of, personally identifiable data in all Records should be minimal and should be used only internally to serve the well-being of the Records. However, occasionally MHOH may receive a subpoena or other compulsory request from a law-enforcement agency or a court or equivalent government body that requests the disclosure of information about a Member, and may be compelled by law to comply with the request. In the event of such a legally compulsory request, MHOH will attempt to notify the affected Member within three business days after the arrival of such subpoena by sending a notice by email to the email address that the affected Member has listed in his or her user preferences.

MHOH cannot advise a user receiving such a notification regarding the law or an appropriate response to a subpoena. MHOH does note, however, that such users may have the legal right to resist or limit that information in court by filing a motion to quash the subpoena. Members who wish to oppose a subpoena or other compulsory request should seek legal advice concerning applicable rights and procedures that may be available. If MHOH receives a court-filed motion to quash or otherwise limit the subpoena as a result of action by a user or their lawyer, MHOH will not disclose the requested information until it receives an order from the court to do so.

Disclaimer
MHOH believes that maintaining and preserving the privacy of Member data is an important value. This Privacy Policy, together with other policies, resolutions, and actions by MHOH, represents a committed effort to safeguard the security of the limited Member information that is collected and retained on our servers. Nevertheless, MHOH cannot guarantee that Member information will remain private. We acknowledge that, in spite of our committed effort to protect private Member information, determined individuals may still develop data-mining and other methods to uncover such information and disclose it. For this reason, MHOH can make no guarantee against unauthorized access to information provided in the course of participating in MHOH records.