Privacy policy and use of cookies
The Scottish Public Health Observatory (ScotPHO) collaboration fully respects your right to privacy when using our website. On this page you will find details of our privacy practices in relation to our website and what we do to maintain your right to privacy. You will also find details of cookies used on our website.
Collection and use of personal information on this website
The ScotPHO collaboration does not collect any personal data about you on this website apart from information you volunteer, either by emailing us or by submitting any online forms. Any information you provide via this website is not made available to any third parties. Any information provided is used by ScotPHO for the purposes of processing your information request and as set out in the paragraph below.
Registering with the ScotPHO website
You can register with the website to receive regular email updates from ScotPHO - please see our Register page for further details. The registration form asks for your email address and name. This information is used to send you the ScotPHO email updates as set out on the Register web page. By registering your details with us you are consenting to ScotPHO sending you these email communications. We may also occasionally contact a sample of registered users to seek feedback on the content, structure and usage of our website.
ScotPHO will store your details securely, will not disclose them to any third party and will only use them for the purposes described above. Once registered, you can unsubscribe at any time by emailing us at phs.scotpho@phs.scot or by following the ‘Unsubscribe’ link that appears on all our ScotPHO emails.
There is no requirement to log in to the public ScotPHO website and all published content is freely available to all users, whether registered or not. We do not, and cannot, track the site usage of individual registered users.
Use of cookies
Due to changes in EU legislation, which came into force on 26 May 2012, we are required to inform you about cookies we store on your device when you visit our website.
To allow us to comply with the legislation we have implemented an 'implied consent' solution. When you visit our website you will see an information bar across the top of each web page informing you that cookies are used and inviting you to acknowledge the message by clicking ok. You do not need to click ok and if you don't the site will continue to function normally. If you do click ok the information bar will be removed from all our web pages and on subsequent visits to our website.
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small data file that certain websites write to your hard drive when you visit them. These can be used for many purposes. This site uses different types of cookie. All the cookies we set on this website are deemed to be minimally intrusive in terms of your privacy. By continuing to use this website you imply that you consent to these cookies being set.
If you want to delete any cookies that are already on your computer, please refer to the instructions for your file management software to locate the file or directory that stores cookies. You may also be able to access them through your web browser. Search in your cookies list to find our cookies if you wish to delete them. More information about cookies, including how to block or delete them, can be found at http://www.AboutCookies.org. Visitors can use our website with no loss of functionality if cookies are disabled in the web browser.
Analytics cookies
We use Google Analytics, a popular web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. Google Analytics uses cookies to help us to analyse how users use our website. The information generated by the Google Analytics cookies about your use of our website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of our website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google undertakes not to associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.
Cookies used by this website
This website sets the cookies listed in the table below and their purpose is also described below.
| Cookie Name | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| d4e4bd2148d97086f319be4ae05a73de | This is a cookie used by the essential functions of the website CMS. No user identifiable or tracking information is held and the cookie expires and is deleted from the local device (e.g. your computer hard drive) at the end of the browser session (i.e. when you exit the browser). | At end of session |
| cookie_bar_hide | Saves the user's acknowledgement of the cookie message displayed at the top of each page. This means that the message will be hidden on subsequent visits to the site. | 1 year |
| __utmb | Google Analytics cookie. This stores the domain name (hash code) of site, pages viewed this session, current time. | 30 minutes |
| __utmc | Google Analytics cookie. This stores the domain name (hash code) of site. | At end of session |
| __utma | Google Analytics cookie. This stores the domain name (hash code) of site, a unique visitor id (randomly generated number), time of first visit, time of previous visit, current time, number of sessions since first visit. | 2 years |
| __utmz | Google Analytics cookie. This stores the domain name (hash code) of site, time when cookie last set, total number of visitor sessions, number of different channels or sources through which this site was reached, source of the last cookie update, search hit tag identifier (or just 'organic' if reached via normal search hit), search medium, keyword phrase used to find site. | 6 months |
This website is compliant with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) Guidance on the rules on use of cookies and similar technologies (399Kb) and the related Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.
Scotland's Health on the Web
The ScotPHO website is hosted on a server managed and maintained by the Scotland's Health on the Web (SHOW) team, which is part of NHS National Services Scotland (NSS). SHOW has its own privacy and data protection policy. Log files are maintained and analysed of all requests for files on NSS servers. Aggregated analyses of these log files are used to monitor website usage. All log file information collected by NSS is kept secure and is not provided to any third parties. NSS will make no attempt to identify individual users. You should be aware, however, that access to web pages will generally create log file entries in the systems of your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or network services provider. These entities may identify the client computer equipment used to access a page. Such monitoring is outwith the responsibility or control of both NSS and the ScotPHO collaboration.
How to contact us
If you have any queries or would like further information about our privacy policy or use of cookies, please contact us by email, telephone or letter. Contact details can be found on our Contact Us page.
