National Services Scotland (NSS) fully respects your right to privacy when using our websites. On this page you will find details of our privacy practices in connection with this website and what we do to maintain your right to privacy.

Cookies Used on this Site

Collection of personal information on this website

National Services Scotland does not collect any personal data about you on this website, apart from information that you volunteer, either by emailing us or by submitting the online forms.

Use of personal information collected via this website

Any information, which you provide via this website is not made available to any third parties. Any information provided is used by NSS solely for the purpose of processing your information request.

Collection and use of technical information

Technical details in connection with visits to this website are logged, collected and used by our website host, Scottish Health on the Web (SHOW).

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 and device used to access a page. Such monitoring would be done by the provider of network services and is outwith the responsibility or control of NSS.

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. These analyses are used to allow us to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our websites. All log file information collected by NSS is kept secure and is not provided to any third parties.

For more detailed guidance, read our host's Scottish Health On the Web's privacy policy.

Use of Cookies

Due to changes in EU legislation, which came into force on 26 May 2012, we need to inform you about cookies we store on your device.

To allow us to meet the legislation we have implemented an 'implied consent' solution. You will see a bar across the top of the site informing you that cookies are used, and inviting you to acknowledge the message by clicking 'OK'. You do not need to click OK and the site will continue to function as expected. If you click OK the information bar will be removed on all pages and on subsequent visits to this site.

What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small files stored in your browser and are used by most websites to help personalise your web experience. Some features on this site will not function if you do not allow cookies.

For additional information on cookies please see the Information Commissioner's Office.

All the cookies we set on this site are deemed to be minimally intrusive in terms of your privacy. By continuing to use this site you imply that you consent to these cookies being set.

Compliance cookies

This is a small cookie used to store your cookie preferences.

Analytics cookies

We use the Google Analytics service on this website. The information generated by the cookie 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.

Third party cookies

We use a number of tools and external applications, in particular Google Analytics and Google Custom Search, to enhance visitor interaction on our site. These services will set a cookie called 'PREF' which Google uses to track user preferences from one site to another.

Functional cookies

These cookies are used on some sites when completing online forms, logging in to the site or using other functions. They do not contain any personal information and for the most part are automatically deleted when you close your browser. This site does not use any functional cookies.

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 can access them through some types of browser. Search in your cookie folders for 'nhsnss' to find our cookie and the Google Analytics cookie if you wish to delete them.

More information about cookies, including how to block them or delete them, can be found at AboutCookies.org.

Visitors can use this website with no perceived loss of functionality if cookies are disabled from the web browser.

Cookies and Technology Used by this Website

This list shows all cookies and technology used by the Scotland's Healthy Animals website, what each is used for and how long it is stored for.

Cookie Name	Purpose	Expiry
_ga	Google Analytics cookie. Used to distinguish users.	2 years
_gat	Google Analytics cookie. Used to throttle request rate.	10 minutes
cookie_bar_hide	To remember if user has seen the cookie notification message	60 days
localStorage	Web Local Storage is a technology supported by most modern web browsers that allows web applications to store data on your computer, similar to cookies, but more structured. This data is subject to the same security measures as cookies are, e.g. data stored by one web-site is not accessible to other web-sites. We use Web Local Storage to enable the accessibility feature of changing the foreground colour and background colour of guidance text.