Privacy Policy and Content Disclaimer
Privacy Policy
If you contact us through the First Minister’s Postbag, we collect your name and email address. We use this information to respond to any question you have.
We delete your personal details after three months.
You can find out more information on how we handle personal data, your rights, and how to contact us via the Scottish Government’s main Privacy Policy.
Cookies and Website Traffic Analysis
When users enter the First Minister website their computers will automatically be issued with ‘cookies’. Cookies are text files which identify users’ computers to the First Minister’s server. The website then creates ‘session’ cookies to store some of the preferences of users moving around the website, e.g. retaining a text-only preference.
The First Minister website uses cookies to measure use of the website including number of visitors, how frequently pages are viewed, and the city and country of origin of users. This helps to determine what is popular and can influence future content and development. For this purpose, the Government uses web analytics to measure and analyse usage of the website. The information collected by the Scottish Government will include IP Address, pages visited, browser type and operating system. The data will not be used to identify any user personally.
| Cookie | Expiry Period | Description |
| _gat | Session | Used to create and retrieve tracker objects |
| _ga | 25/02/15 | Part of Google analytics, and is used to distinguish users |
| _utmz | Session | Stores the traffic source or campaign that explains how the user reached your site |
| _utmt | Session | Used to throttle request rate |
| _utmc | Session | Used to determine whether the user was in a new session/visit along with _utmb |
| _utmb | Session | Used to determine new sessions/visits |
| _utma | 25/02/15 | Used to distinguish users and sessions |
| CivicCookieControl | Session | Used to inform users of the websites cookie policy |
Content disclaimer
The Scottish Government seeks to ensure that the information published on its website is up to date and accurate. However, the information on the website does not constitute legal or professional advice and the Scottish Government cannot accept any liability for actions arising from its use. The Scottish Government cannot be held responsible for the contents of any pages referenced by an external link.