Privacy Policy
Quick links on this page:
User anonymity and personal information on NHS Health Scotland websites
Use of cookies
Data protection and confidentiality
User anonymity and personal information on NHS Health Scotland websites
Log files are maintained and analysed of all requests for files on the NHS Health Scotland web servers. Log files do not capture personal information, but do capture the user's IP address which is automatically recognised by NHS Health Scotland web servers. Aggregated analyses of these log files are used to monitor website usage. These analyses may be made available to NHS Health Scotland staff and partner agencies to allow them to measure, for example, overall popularity of the site and typical user paths through the site.
Except as stated already, NHS Health Scotland will make no attempt to identify individual users. You should be aware, however, that access to web pages will generally create log entries in the systems of your ISP or network services provider. These entities may be in a position to identify the client computer equipment used to access a page. Such monitoring would be done by the provider of network services and is beyond the responsibility or control of NHS Health Scotland.
NHS Health Scotland will make no attempt to track or identify individual users, except where there is a reasonable suspicion that unauthorised access to systems is being attempted. In the case of all users, NHS Health Scotland reserves the right to attempt to identify and track any individual who is reasonably suspected of trying to gain unauthorised access to computer systems or resources operating as part of NHS Health Scotland web services. As a condition of use of this site, all users must give permission for NHS Health Scotland to use its access logs to attempt to track users who are reasonably suspected of gaining, or attempting to gain, unauthorised access.
All log file information collected by Health Scotland is kept secure and no access to raw log files is given to any third party.
Use of cookies
NHS Health Scotland websites do not store any information that would, on its own, allow us to identify individual users of this service without their permission. Any cookies that may be used by Health Scotland websites are used either solely on a per session basis or to maintain user preferences.
When users enter the NHS Health Scotland website their computers will automatically be issued with 'cookies'. Cookies are text files which identify users' computers to NHS Health Scotland's servers. The website then creates "session" cookies to store some of the preferences of users moving around the website, e.g. retaining a text-only preference. Cookies in themselves do not identify individual users but identify only the computer used and they are deleted on departure from the website.
Many websites do this to track traffic flows, whenever users visit those websites.
The NHS Health Scotland website uses third-party cookies to measure use of the website including number of visitors, how frequently pages are viewed, and the city and country of origin of users. This helps to determine what is popular and can influence future content and development. For this purpose, the NHS Health Scotland uses Google Analytics to measure and analyse usage of the website. The information collected will include IP Address, pages visited, browser type and operating system. The data will not be used to identify any user personally.
Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that user.
Data protection and confidentiality
Some services on NHS Health Scotland websites require us to collect personal information from you. To comply with the Data Protection Act and NHS confidentiality guidance, we have a duty to tell you how we store the information we collect and how it is used.
Feedback Form
All of the information you provide on the Feedback Form will be automatically securely stored in our Feedback database. This database is used to notify the Webmaster of feedback and to enable the Webmaster to action feedback for responses where necessary. We may need to forward your name, email address and comments to Health Scotland colleagues to reply to you directly. We will use your email address if we need to send you a reply. You are only required to provide us with your name and email address on the Feedback Form so that we can send you a reply. We will use your email address if we need to send you a reply, and we may need to forward your name, email address and comments to enable NHS Health Scotland colleagues to reply to you directly. If you do not wish to use the form you can email us directly at webmaster@health.scot.nhs.uk
The information in the Feedback database will also be used for monitoring use of the feedback service. We will not use your name or email address for monitoring purposes, nor will we pass your personal information on to any third party.