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Introduction
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Privacy statement
 
A visitor at reception

A visitor at reception

Festival of Britain: Richard Leaky, plasterer's labourer, 1950. Cat ref: WORK 25/202Privacy statement

This privacy statement applies to The National Archives website and all of the services that it offers. It also covers our educational site, the Learning Curve (www.learningcurve.gov.uk). It does not cover other websites to which links are provided from this website.

The Data Protection Act 1998 protects the rights of individuals by making sure that any organisation that collects or holds information about living people does so in a way that is fair to those people.

The National Archives takes your privacy seriously and is committed to responsible handling of personal information in accordance with our Information Charter, which is as follows:

Information Charter

We need to handle personal information about you so that we can provide services for you. This is how we look after that information:

When we ask for personal information we promise:

  • To make sure you know why we need it;
  • To ask only for what we need, and not to collect too much or irrelevant information;
  • To protect it and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn’t;
  • To let you know if we share it with other organisations to give you better public services – and if you can say no;
  • To make sure we don’t keep it longer than necessary; and
  • Not to make your personal information available for commercial use without your permission.

In return we ask you to:

  • Give us accurate information; and
  • Tell us as soon as possible if there are any changes, such as a new address.

This helps us keep your information reliable and up to date.

You can get more details on:

For more information please contact our Data Protection Officer, Susan Healy on susan.healy@nationalarchives.gov.uk or write to her at The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, TW9 4DU.

When we ask you for information we will keep to the law, including the Data Protection Act 1998. For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues you can contact the Information Commissioner at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. Phone 08456 306060 or 01635 545745 Fax 01625 524510 Website www.ico.gov.uk.

Some of the archives we hold contain information about living people. We apply the same standards to handling this information, except that we do not change historical records by making corrections to them. See section 4 of our Data Protection Policy and section 12 of our Data Protection Procedures for more details about personal information in the archives –
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/legal/pdf/policy-feb08.pdf and http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/legal/pdf/procedures-feb08.pdf

Privacy and this website

When you visit the website we collect website usage information and information about your computer and internet connection, including your computer's IP address, the type and version of browser and operating system you use, your internet domain and, if you arrived at nationalarchives.gov.uk via a link from another website, the URL of the linking page.

We use this information to ensure, as far as is practical, that our site is compatible with the browsers and operating systems used by most of our visitors. We also use it for in-house research to improve our understanding of customer needs in developing the website. The results of all such research and analysis will be presented as anonymous or aggregated information and will not reveal any personal facts about individual customers.

Cookies are used on our website. They are used to track a user's session and for remembering the options visitors select as they navigate through the sections of the site. These cookies do not contain any personal information. We use this information to find out what site features are most popular so that we can develop the website in the light of our analysis of people’s usage. We do not pass information users give us to other organisations in a way that enables individual users to be identified but we may share anonymised information about users and their usage of the website with partner organisations wishing to use it for research purposes.

Customers may pay for chargeable services using their credit/debit cards. These transactions are conducted using the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) secure website. Email addresses are used to permit the helpdesk to check a caller's identity in the event of an account query related to a particular session.

Explaining terms used on this website

Browser

Used to locate and display web pages via a software application. The most popular ones are Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Netscape Navigator.

Cookie

Message given to a web browser by a web server. The message is then stored by the browser in a text file called cookie.txt. Each time the browser requests a page from the server, this message is sent back. A cookie’s main objective is to identify users and personalise their visit by customising web pages for them, for example welcoming them by name next time they visit the same site. A site using cookies will usually invite you to provide personal information such as your name, email address and interests.

IP (Internet Protocol)

All networks connected to the Internet speak IP, the technical standard that allows data to be transmitted between two devices. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is responsible or making sure messages get from one host to another and that the messages are understood.

IP address

If you are connected to the Internet you have one. It may look something like this: 198.184.98.9.

Web server

Delivers web pages to your computer.