EDINA is a UK national academic data centre, designated by JISC on behalf of UK funding bodies and is based at the University of Edinburgh. We are committed to preserving your privacy.

Please read the following carefully to understand how we use and protect the information obtained from those using the sites or services that EDINA provides (“the Services and the Sites”).

This policy (together with any separate terms of use document applicable to any Service) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us.

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998 (“the Act”), the data controller is the Higher Education Funding Council England, Northavon House, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QD.

Information we may collect from you

We may collect and process data about you:

• When you provide us with your personal details (such as your name, telephone number and e-mail addresses) by registering to use any Service, registering as an institutional service representative, when you fill in any forms on any Site, when you report a problem to us or if you submit an enquiry to us relating to any Site or Service.
• When you respond to any surveys which, for research purposes, we may ask you to complete.
From your usage of any Site or any Service and data that you post on any Site or Service, e-mail to us or send to us.

Use of your information

We use your information:

• To enable us to supply you with the Services and information which you have requested.
• To ensure that the Services, and any other content from any Site, is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
• To contact you about resources you have deposited within a Service.
• To analyse the information we collect for service usage purposes and so that we can administer, support, improve and develop the Sites and the Services.
• To provide you with information, products or services which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes.
• To notify you about changes to any Service.

We may contact you by post, telephone, fax or e-mail. If you change your mind about being contacted in the future by any of these means, then please let us know.

Storage of your information

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access any Service or certain parts of any Site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to us; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Disclosure of your information

Authorised personnel within EDINA will be able to access the information that you provide to us. We may also disclose your information to your own institution, to JISC, to third party service data providers or to any other third party if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply any terms of use applicable to any Service; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of EDINA, the University of Edinburgh, our users, or others.

Unless required or permitted to do so by law, we will not otherwise share, sell or distribute any of the information you provide to us without your consent.

IP addresses and cookies

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for the purposes of system administration and service usage analysis. This information is statistical data about users' browsing actions and patterns and is not used to identify any individual. However, this information may be used by your own institution for usage analysis purposes.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. We use this information to track your movements through the Site and to find out how the Site is being used. Cookies are used for service resilience and session persistence and enable us to:

• To estimate our audience size and usage pattern.
• To recognise you when you return to any Site.
• To store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise the Site according to your individual interests.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of the Site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to use any Service.

• See www.aboutcookies.org for more information about how cookies work and how to delete and/or disable them if you wish.

We use a third party product “Google Analytics”, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”), to help us analyse how our Site is used. In doing so information about your use of our Site, including your IP address, may be transmitted to, and stored by, Google. This information will be subject to Google's Privacy Policy.

• See Google's Privacy Policy

Security

We employ security measures to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction or damage.

Please help us keep our records updated by informing us of any changes to your e-mail address and other contact details.

Changes to our privacy policy

We may amend this privacy policy from time to time. If we make any substantial changes we will notify you by posting a prominent notice on the relevant Sites.

Your rights

You have the right to ask for a copy of the personal information about you which is held by us in our records, in return for which we are permitted to charge a small fee.

The Sites may, from time to time, contain links to websites of third parties. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Contact us

If you have any queries concerning your personal information or any questions on our use of the information, then please contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.