APAN Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

As a condition to access APAN, you agree to this User Agreement and to strictly observe the following DOs and DON'Ts:

A. Do undertake the following:

1. You are requesting access to the APAN system.  APAN is to be used only for lawful activity, and not for personal use.

2. Comply with all applicable laws, including, without limitation, privacy laws, intellectual property laws, export control laws, tax laws, and regulatory requirements;

3. Provide accurate information to us and update it as necessary;

4. Review and comply with our Privacy Policy;

5. Review and comply with notices sent by APAN concerning the Services; and

6. Use the Services in a professional manner.

7. Actively review content published by other Users of groups that you own to ensure that content meets the Terms of this Agreement.

B. Don't undertake the following:

1. Act dishonestly or unprofessionally by engaging in unprofessional behavior by posting inappropriate, inaccurate, or objectionable content to APAN;

2. Duplicate, license, sub license, publish, broadcast, transmit, distribute, perform, display, sell, rebrand, or otherwise transfer information found on APAN (excluding content posted by you) except as permitted in this Agreement or as expressly authorized by APAN;

3. Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, decipher or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for any underlying intellectual property used to provide the Services, or any part thereof;

4. Include information in your profile or elsewhere, except in designated fields, that reveals your identity or sensitive personal information such as an email address, phone number or address or is confidential in nature;

5. Create a user profile for anyone other than a natural person;

6. Utilize information, content or any data you view on and/or obtain from APAN to provide any service that is competitive, in APAN’s sole discretion, with APAN;

7. Imply or state, directly or indirectly, that you are affiliated with or endorsed by APAN unless you have entered into a written agreement with APAN (this includes, but is not limited to representing yourself as an accredited APAN trainer if you have not been certified by APAN as such);

8. Rent, lease, loan, trade, sell/re-sell access to APAN or any information therein, or the equivalent, in whole or part;

9. Use manual or automated software, devices, scripts robots, other means or processes to access, “scrape,” “crawl” or “spider” any web pages or other services contained in the site;

10. Use bots or other automated methods to add or download contacts, send or redirect messages or other permitted activities other than through APAN-sanctioned tools such as its application programming interfaces or its own services or integrations with other, partner services;

11. Access, via automated or manual means or processes, APAN for purposes of monitoring its availability, performance or functionality or for any competitive purpose;

12. Engage in “framing,” “mirroring,” or otherwise simulating the appearance or function of APAN’s website;

13. Attempt to or actually access APAN by any means other than through the interfaces provided by APAN;

14. Attempt to or actually override any security component included in or underlying APAN;

15. Engage in any action that directly or indirectly interferes with the proper working of or places an unreasonable load on our infrastructure, including but not limited to unsolicited communications to other Users or APAN personnel, attempts to gain unauthorized access, or transmission or activation of computer viruses;

16. Harass, abuse or harm another person, including sending unwelcome communications to others using APAN;

17. Collect, use or transfer any information, including but not limited to, personally identifiable information obtained from APAN except as expressly permitted in this Agreement or as the owner of such information may expressly permit;

18. Share information of Users without their express consent;

19. Interfere with or disrupt APAN, including but not limited to any servers or networks connected to APAN;

20. Invite people you do not know to join your network of colleagues;

21. Use or attempt to use another's account, or create a false identity on APAN;

22. Upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available or initiate any content that:

a. Falsely states, impersonates or otherwise misrepresents your identity, including but not limited to the use of a pseudonym, or misrepresenting your current or previous positions and qualifications, or your affiliations with a person or entity, past or present;

b. Is unlawful, libelous, abusive, obscene, discriminatory or otherwise objectionable;

c. Adds to a content field content that is not intended for such field (i.e. submitting a telephone number in the “title” or any other field, or including telephone numbers, email addresses, street addresses or any personally identifiable information for which there is not a field provided by APAN);

d. Includes information that you do not have the right to disclose or make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as Controlled Unclassified Information, Legacy For Official Use Only, insider information, or proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements);

e. Infringes upon patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights or other proprietary rights;

f. Includes any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes,” or any other form of solicitation. This prohibition includes but is not limited to (a) using APAN invitations to send messages to people who don’t know you or who are unlikely to recognize you as a known contact; (b) using APAN to connect to people who don’t know you and then sending unsolicited promotional messages to those direct connections without their permission; and (c) sending messages to distribution lists, newsgroup aliases, or group aliases;

g. Contains software viruses, worms, or any other computer code, files or programs that interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment of APAN or any User of APAN;

h. Forges headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any communication transmitted through the Services;

23. Participate, directly or indirectly, in the setting up or development of a network that seeks to implement practices that are similar to sales by network or the recruitment of independent home salespeople to the purposes of creating a pyramid scheme or other similar practices.

C. APAN is a United States Department of Defense (US DOD) web based service used for information sharing and collaboration.

1. APAN is the premier collaboration enterprise for the US DOD. The APAN network of communities fosters multinational interaction and multilateral cooperation by allowing users to post multimedia and other content in blogs, wikis, forums, document libraries and media galleries.

2. APAN is used for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Exercise Planning, Conferences and Work Groups. APAN provides non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and U.S. partner nations who do not have access to traditional, closed USDOD networks with an unclassified tool to communicate.

3. APAN and its cyber security partners routinely monitor communications on the APAN network for purposes of but not limited to penetration testing, security monitoring, network operations and/or defense, personnel misconduct, law enforcement and investigations.

D. What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site, respond to a survey or complete your profile. When registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your name, e-mail address or phone number. You may, however, visit our site anonymously.

E. What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs), *and at any time, APAN and its cyber security partners may inspect and/or seize data stored on the APAN system.  APAN does not monitor any activity which does not occur on APAN.

F. How do we protect your information?

1. We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you access your personal information.

2. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Database to be only accessed by those authorized with special access rights to our systems, and are required to keep the information confidential.

3. APAN includes security measures (authentication, access controls, etc.) to protect APAN interests, not for your personal benefit or privacy.

G. Do we use cookies?

1. Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information.

2. We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits.

H. Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

1. We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential.

2. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. We will not distribute your personal information to outside parties without your consent.

3. All users of our site may make any changes to their information at any time by logging into our site and going to the 'Settings' page and/or editing their profile.

I. Online Privacy Policy Only.

1. This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

2. Communications using, or data stored on APAN are not private, is subject to monitoring and search, and may be disclosed or used for any APAN authorized purpose.

Changes to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page, and/or update the Privacy Policy modification date below.

This policy was last modified on 08/10/2023.

Contacting Us

If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy you may submit a support ticket.