Privacy and cookies

The purpose of this privacy guide is to tell you what to expect when the Commissioner's office collects personal information.

We collect information about:

visitors to our website
people who subscribe to our e-newsletter
people who contact us with a question or a comment for the Commissioner, where we would want to get back in touch to provide them with an answer
people who want to request a publication or resource from us

job applicants

Things to know about personal information

You don't have to provide us with any of your personal details if you don't want to. You are free to say "no" at any time.
If you don't want to provide us with your real name, you might decide to use a nickname instead.
For your safety, we won't publish your full name or e-mail address on this website.
We will keep our firewall and security systems up to date to make sure that your details are kept safe at all times.

Keeping your personal information safe

The Data Protection Act 1998 is the law that tells organisations what they must do to keep people's personal details safe and secure.

Organisations have a responsibility to make sure that your private information doesn't fall into the wrong hands or get used in a way that you're not happy with. For example, they should make sure that if you sign up for their newsletter you won't get lots of spam from a different organisation as a result.

Accessing your personal information

If we ever ask you to tell us any of your personal details, we'll tell you:

why we're asking for it

what it will be used for

If you're not sure about what this means, please feel free to ask us about this at any time.

You have the right to see any of the information that we holds about you. You can find out more about how to do this by e-mailing us, writing to us or phoning us. If you find that any of the information we've got is wrong, then please tell us and we'll do our best to put it right as soon as possible. There are a very few times when the law says we don't have to provide you with absolutely all the information we have, such as if providing you with that information means that we'd have to reveal personal information about another person. If we can't release all your information, though, we will tell you why.

We will normally only share your info with someone outside the office of Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People when we've asked your permission to do this.

However, if we are worried about your safety – or the safety of someone close to you – we might have to pass your information on without your permission. Depending on the circumstances, this might involve us contacting the Children's Reporter, the local social work office or the police. If we did pass on your information, we would normally tell you we were doing so and our reasons why.

How we use cookies

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your computer or other device by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work or work more efficiently. They are also used to provide information to the owners of the website you visit.

The name and purpose of every cookie we use can be found in the table below:

Cookie	Cookie File Name	Purpose	More Information
Google Analytic	_utma -utmb _utmc _utmz	These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.	Information from Google on how it protects the information it stores.
Session Cookie	ASP.NET_SessionId	This session cookie is used by the website to maintain the state of pages between page postbacks. It is also required for visitors using the commenting feature and switching the site into a 'Low Graphic Version'. This cookie is not linked to any identifiable user information stored in the site database and expires at the end of the session.
Content Management System (CMS) Cookie	.ASPXAUTH	This cookie is delivered only to CMS users when logged into the CMS. It is essential to the usage of the CMS. Only employees of the Commissioner are CMS users.
Poll Cookie	pollld_X	When a visitor votes in a poll on our website a cookie is saved on their computer registering that a vote has been placed.	The supplier of our CMS is rebuilding the poll feature to exclude this cookie.
DoubleClick Cookie	time: ad_placement_id: ad_id: userid: client_ip: referral_url:	Allows us use Google Analytics' Demographics and Interest Reporting features	Find out more about these features below.

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. Cookies are sometimes needed for parts of a website to run well, be easy to access or even to work at all. Because of this, disabling cookies may mean that you become unable to use all sites on the web.

You can find more information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, at www.allaboutcookies.org.

You can opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites by visiting the service's opt-out page.

Demographics and Interest Reporting

We use Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting to find out which parts of our site are popular with children and young people.

This means that we Google Analytics collect information about you that it wouldn’t otherwise be able to, using something called the DoubleClick cookie. If you don’t want your information collected in this way, you can:

use Google’s Ad Settings to opt out of Display Advertising; or
use Google’s browser add-on to opt out of Google Analytics.

We will not use any information reported by Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting that does not concern the ages of people who use our site. We won’t use it to identify any individual user of our site.

Find out more about Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting.