The Army, as part of the Ministry of Defence, is committed to protecting your privacy. When you contact us or visit our websites, your personal information is stored securely and processed fairly as required by the Data Protection Act 1998.
Our privacy policy explains the following
The Army, as part of the Ministry of Defence, is committed to protecting your privacy. When you contact us or visit our websites, your personal information is stored securely and processed fairly as required by the Data Protection Act 1998.
We may update our privacy policy from time to time, so you may want to check the latest version before providing personal data to the Army. This version was last updated on 19 October 2015.
We collect personal information when you:
In addition, information is automatically captured each time you visit our websites. We use cookies (as described above) and collect IP addresses (that can uniquely identify a specific computer or network device on the internet) to track visitors to our websites and prepare management reports.
We use the personal information you provide to answer your requests for information, to process your applications to join the Army, and to make improvements to our websites.
The Army will not share your personal details with other organisations outside the Ministry of Defence (unless we are required to do so by law).
Your information may be handled by the companies we use to provide data processing and marketing services. These third parties are required to comply strictly with our privacy policies that prohibit the use of personal data for their own business purposes.
Individuals applying to join the Army should be aware that some of their personal information may be shared with other MOD organisations and Services - including the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.
If you agree, the information contained in targeting cookies may be shared with other websites so the advertising displayed on these sites is more relevant to you. No personal data will be shared with other websites – only IP addresses, which identify a specific computer or network device.
Your information will be held on our systems for as long as is necessary to answer your requests and maintain a dialogue with those individuals who remain interested in the Army and Army careers.
If you register an interest, but do not apply to join the Army, we will keep your personal data for no more than 3 years. This period starts on the day you last made contact with the Army, and is reset each time you logon to our website or contact us to request further information.
If you apply to join the Army, but do not enter Service in the British Armed Forces, we will keep your personal data for no more than 10 years (or 35 years if you attend an Army Officer Selection Board). Any sensitive personal data will be removed after 1 year. This period only starts if and when all your applications to join the British Armed Forces have become inactive, and is reset each time you logon to our website or contact us to request further information.
At the end of this period, we will remove your personal information from our systems or treat the data to remove any personal identifiers that could be used to identify you as an individual.
If you enter Service in the British Armed Forces, some of your personal data will be retained for 100 years as required under the Public Record Acts.
Your online account is required to manage your current applications.
You can ask us to remove your account but we can only do this if you have no active applications to join any Service in the British Armed Forces.
You can delete an individual application and remove the personal data entered on your application form at any point before it is submitted.
You may contact us to withdraw a submitted application at any time but your personal data will continue to be held on our systems (as described above).
We will only contact or send information about the Army and Army careers to those people who have given us permission to do so.
We will only provide information that is relevant to you. Further details are provided in Our Communications Policy.
If you choose to receive marketing communications, you can tell us whether you want to be contacted by post, phone, email or text messages. You can change these preferences whenever you contact us or at any time by logging on to your account (if you have registered online).
If you submit an application to join the Army, we will contact you by the most appropriate means to follow-up and process your application.
We may use the personal data you provide to make automated decisions that affect you – for example, to decide if you are eligible to join the Armed Forces or suitable for a particular role.
We will inform you whenever we use personal data processed solely by automated means to make a decision that has a significant effect on you as an individual. In these cases, we will take reasonable steps to safeguard your legitimate rights and give you the opportunity to challenge any decision taken by automated means.
Many young people are interested in information about the Army. The privacy and security of their personal data is very important to us.
We encourage all parents to supervise their children’s use of the internet and for young people to always seek permission from a parent/guardian before entering any personal data in any website.
We will not process or store personal data about children under 14 years and will not accept or solicit enquiries, requests, registrations or applications from children.
We ask everyone under 16 years to confirm that they have spoken to a parent/guardian about their interest in the Army and obtained their permission before providing us with personal data. We will not accept or process requests or store personal data about 14 and 15 year olds without this confirmation.
We always obtain written consent from a parent/guardian before inviting anyone under 18 to any recruitment activities – including meetings, briefings, information days and visits.
You can request a report detailing all the information we hold about you by writing to the address below.
Write to the address below asking us not to contact you again.
Write to the address below asking us to delete your details from our records.
You need to tell us which records you want us to remove, if you have registered an interest or applied to join more than one Service (Army, Royal Navy or Royal Air Force).
Further advice on the “right to prevent processing” is provided on the Information Commission’s website (see related links).
More information about the Data Protection Act 1998 and your rights can be found on the Information Commissioner's Office website (see related links).
More information about the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and the information made available to the public by the Ministry of Defence, can be found on the MOD pages on the GOV.UK website (see related links).
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the information we hold about you, please write to
Data Protection Officer,
Army Recruiting and Training Division (MIS),
Building 370,
Trenchard Lines,
Upavon,
Pewsey,
Wiltshire
SN9 6BE
Email: ARTD-DPO@mod.uk
To improve your experience and make this site simpler to use, we sometimes place small data files on your computer or mobile device. These are known as cookies. Most big websites do this too.
They improve things by:
Our cookies aren't used to identify you personally. They're just here to make the site work better for you. Indeed, you can manage and/or delete cookies as you wish.
The cookies used on this website can be grouped into four categories:
1. Strictly necessary cookies
2. Performance cookies
3. Functional cookies
4. Targeting cookies
To improve your experience and make this site simpler to use, we sometimes place small data files on your computer or mobile device. These are known as cookies. Most big websites do this too.
They improve things by:
Our cookies aren't used to identify you personally. They're just here to make the site work better for you. Indeed, you can manage and/or delete cookies as you wish.
The cookies used on this website can be grouped into four categories:
1. Strictly necessary cookies
2. Performance cookies
3. Functional cookies
4. Targeting cookies
These are described in more detail below:
All users will be given the opportunity to change their cookie settings when they first visit our website. If you continue without changing your cookie settings, we will assume you are happy to accept all types of cookie on the Army website.
You can accept or reject functional or targeting cookies at any time by changing your cookie settings, although third-party advertising networks may continue to use the information previously collected through targeting cookies.
You cannot change the settings for strictly necessary or performance cookies because these are required to provide a good browsing experience and allow us to collect basic statistics on website usage.
Users with an online account will be asked to accept the cookies required for the online application when they register or log in.
To learn more about cookies in general and how to manage them, visit AboutCookies.org. You can control and/or delete cookies through the settings in your web browser settings: the 'Help' menu option should tell you how. Note that if you delete cookies, or if you use a different web browser or device, you may need to enter information again.
Read on to learn more about how and where we use cookies on the Army website.
Cookies of this type let you move around the website and use essential features. They don't gather any information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you’ve been on the internet.
Accepting these cookies is a condition of using the Army website. If you prevent these cookies, we can’t guarantee your security or predict how our website will perform during your visit.
| Purpose | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| To allow the website to understand the pages you have looked at and what information should be saved as you navigate around the Army website during your visit. | ASP.NET_SessionId | Randomly generated text | Session |
| To remember data related to your login for RoleFinder and In Your Area | attempted_cookie | Randomly generated text | 1 minute |
| To remember your cookie acceptance level | _britishArmy | List of preferences | 10 years |
Cookies of this type collect information about how you use our website, such as which pages you visit, which videos you watch and if you experience any errors. These cookies don't collect any information that could identify you – all the information collected is anonymous and is only used to help us improve how our website works and understand what interests our users.
Accepting these cookies is a condition of using the Army website. If you prevent these cookies, we can’t guarantee how our website will perform during your visit.
| Provided by | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| Sitestat.com | s1 | Randomly generated text | 10 years |
| Google.com | __utma | Randomly generated text | 2 years |
| __utmb | Randomly generated text | Session | |
| __utmc | Randomly generated text | Session | |
| __utmz | Randomly generated text | 6 months |
Cookies of this type are used to provide services or to remember settings to improve your visit. They don't gather any information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you've been on the internet.
You can control whether or not these cookies are used, but preventing them may mean we can't offer you some services, and will reduce the support we can offer you. It's also possible that preventing these cookie stops us remembering that you didn't want a specific service.
| Purpose | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| To ensure you rate a web page only once | _britishArmyRdPageRating | Randomly generated text | 1 year |
| To ensure you respond to a poll only once | _britishArmyRdPoll | Randomly generated text | 1 year |
| To check whether you are using the online application form for the first time | NewApplicationForm | Randomly generated text | 1 year |
| To remember the area you select or your postcode for the In Your Area function | iya_location | Randomly generated text | Session |
| To check whether you have visited Role Finder before | rfFirstVisit | True | Session |
| To allow Role Finder to display roles in a consistent order | rfSeed | Randomly generated text | Session |
| To remember the filters you have used when using Role Finder | rfview | List of preferences | Session |
| To remember the roles you have recently viewed within Role Finder | rfRecentlyViewed | Randomly generated text | Session |
Cookies of this type are linked to advertising networks and services provided by third parties, such as 'Like' buttons and 'Share' buttons. The third party provides these services in return for recognising that you have visited our website, and to get information about your visit so they can display adverts you may be interested in.
These cookies may also be used to track your browsing across other websites used by third-party advertising networks
You can control whether or not these cookies are used, but preventing them may stop us from offering you some services. All of these cookies are managed by third parties, and you may alternatively use the third parties’ own tools to prevent these cookies.
Online advertising
The following cookies are used to track the effectiveness of our online advertising.
| Provided by | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| doubleclick.net | id | Randomly generated text | 2 years |
The following cookie is for Appnexus, an advertising platform used by a large number of companies in the UK and globally. Cookies set by Appnexus are used to report on the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, such as Army recruitment campaigns. The reported data may be used to improve Army recruitment campaigns, or for other unrelated companies who also use the Appnexus platform.
Appnexus also uses cookies to allow advertising to be targeted based on your behaviour – for example, the sites you visit. It does not use any personal information that identifies you. For information on how Appnexus uses cookies for advertising, please follow the link in the right-hand panel; to read how MediaIQ uses cookies, such as those set by Appnexus, please download the pdf from the mediaiqdigital website in the right-hand panel.
| Provided by | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| MediaIQ | Uuid2 | Randomly generated text | 1 year |
The following cookie is used for website analytics and behavioural targeting, which aims to increase the effectiveness of online advertising, such as for Army recruitment. It does not use any personal information that identifies you. The cookie will allow advertising to be targeted based on your behaviour – for example, the sites you visit. Read Quantcast’s privacy policy by following the link in the right-hand panel; you can opt out of all Quantcast cookies by following the opt-out link on the right.
| Provided by | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| quantcast.com | pixel.quantserve.com | Randomly generated text | 18 months |
Share this page
These cookies allow you to use the ‘Share this page’ panel to share pages on social networking sites.
| Provided by | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| AddThis.com | uit | Randomly generated text | 1 day |
| uid | Randomly generated text | 2 years | |
| uvc | Randomly generated text | 2 years | |
| psc | Randomly generated text | 2 years | |
| loc | Randomly generated text | 3 months | |
| dt | Randomly generated text | 1 month | |
| di | Randomly generated text | 2 years |
Facebook 'like'
These cookies allow you to like pages within your Facebook account.
| Provided by | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| Facebook.com | c_user | Randomly generated text | Session |
| datr | Randomly generated text | 2 years | |
| lu | Randomly generated text | 2 years | |
| xs | Randomly generated text | Session | |
| locale | The language you are using (eg en_GB) | 1 week |
Google maps
These cookies track how many people are using the maps provided on our website.
| Provided by | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| Google.com | NID | Randomly generated text | 2 years |
| PREF | Randomly generated text | 2 years |
Start Thinking Soldier
These cookies store settings for Start Thinking Soldier, which uses Flash.
| Provided by | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| Adobe.com | s_cc | True/false | Session |
| s_sq | Randomly generated text | Session | |
| s_vi | Randomly generated text | Session | |
| s_dmdbase_v_1 | Done | Session | |
| mbox | Randomly generated text | 14 days | |
| fsr.s | Randomly generated text | Session | |
| SETTINGS.LOC ALE | The language you are using (eg en_GB) | Session | |
| s_vi | Randomly generated text | 5 years |
The following strictly necessary cookies are used to provide the online application account functionality.
| Purpose | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| To remember data related to your login for the online application | BigServerPOOL-5.79.56.75-443 | Randomly generated text | Session |
| PHPSESSID | Randomly generated text | Session |
The following performance cookies are used to collect anonymous information about how you use our website. Accepting these cookies is a condition of using the Army website. If you prevent these cookies, we can't guarantee how our website will perform during your visit.
| Provided by | Cookies used | Typical content | Lasts for |
| Sitestat.com | s1 | Randomly generated text | 10 years |
| Google.com | __utma | Randomly generated text | 2 years |
| __utmb | Randomly generated text | Session | |
| __utmc | Randomly generated text | Session | |
| __utmz | Randomly generated text | 6 months |
We update our use of cookies from time to time. This version was last updated on 15 May 2014.