We respect and are committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy lets you know how any personal information is processed and used by the PHO. Our procedures covering the storage and disclosure of your information are designed to comply with the Data Protection Act 1998. For further information regarding the way the LHO manages its information, please read the strategy found here:

/AboutUs/InformationManagement.aspx

Your use of this web site signifies your consent to us collecting and using personal information about you as specified below in accordance with this Policy. If you are a registered user, this policy will be applied subject to any particular limitations or choices you express in your User Profile.

All users: You may provide personal information when communicating with us. In addition we will collect information about your preferences both when you tell us what these are and by analysis of customer traffic, including by using cookies (see below). We may use personal information collected about you to let you know about functionality changes to our web site, or changes to our terms and conditions of use; we may also send you information about PHO meetings, events and publications.

Registered users: As part of the registration process we ask for your name, email address and organisation address as required fields; this data is stored in our database of contacts. Once you have been approved for registration and supplied with a username and password, the default disclosure level for the data you have supplied is that it is available to all other registered users (who will be people with a role or relevant interest in public health). If you wish to restrict or increase the disclosure level you can do so by accessing and amending your User Profile, available as a link from the Preferences page when you log on with your username and password. The PHO accepts no liability arising from this disclosure.

A cookie is a small piece of information that is stored on your computer's hard drive by your web browser and cannot do your computer any harm. When you revisit the associated website the server will recognise the cookie, which gives it information about your last visit(s). In other words, a cookie allows it to remember choices and submitted information so that you needn' t reset certain user-defined features or re-enter details. Cookies are either permanent (usually with a longterm expiry date) or are only used in the current session and cease to exist when the browser is shut down (so called 'session cookies').

Most browsers accept cookies automatically, but you can alter the settings of your web browser to prevent automatic acceptance, you can delete cookies easily, and you can change your browser settings even to refuse cookies alltogether.

The way this is done differs between different browsers and browser versions. The following instructions apply to the two most common ones.

If you use Internet Explorer (version 6.0) you will find the relevant options in:
For deletion: Tools > Internet Options (> General) > Delete cookies
For refusal and prompting: Tools > Internet Options > Privacy
In this interface you can set a general privacy level, there is an 'advanced' button for finetuning (allow session cookies), and also an 'edit' button to apply settings to specific websites.

If you use Netscape (version 7.1) you will find the relevant options in:
Tools > Cookie Manager > Block/Unblock cookies from this site
Tools > Cookie Manager > Manage Stored Cookies > Stored Cookies
Information about sites and the cookies is displayed and they can be removed individually or as a bulk. The refusal of future cookies from a site if you have removed cookies from this site before.
Edit > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Cookies allows you to choose in detail how you want your browser to deal with cookies (tickbox: Limit maximum lifetime of cookies to: current session)

Cookies are used to store choices and preferences and to give us information about your last visit. We monitor individual use of the website in order to provide personally tailored features and information such as favourite font size, to hide the right navigation bar , or to keep your search preferences (compare 'Preferences').

We use permanent cookies as well as session cookies. To secure the flawless functioning of the website we would recommend to allow at least the setting of session cookies.

We collect site usage statistics from our server logs. This data helps us to manage and plan website functions, and will be used as part of the evaluation of the website. Aggregate site usage statistics may be provided to third parties but will not include information that can be used to identify you.

The PHO reserves the right to access and disclose individually identifiable information to comply with applicable laws and lawful government requests, to operate its systems properly or to protect itself or its users.