What happens to your data

Reading this site

This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics, advertising or tracking pixels, and it stores nothing in your browser. The fonts are served from this site rather than from Google, so no request leaves for anyone else while a page loads. The host offers website owners an analytics feature of its own, which works by inserting a small script into the page; it is turned off for this site. There is nothing to consent to, which is why there is no consent banner.

What this site does not do

There is no consultation service and nothing to book: no appointments, no treatment, no opinion on your own mouth. There is no newsletter and no mailing list, no advertising and no trackers of any kind, no account to create and nothing for sale. None of that is a feature held back for later. This is one person writing about dentistry, and the list of things done with your data is short because the list of things done here is short.

What the host sees

The site is published on Cloudflare Pages, in an account held for this site alone. Serving a web page requires a server to receive the request, so Cloudflare processes technical information such as your IP address, your browser and the page asked for, in order to deliver the page and to protect against attack. That is a normal part of how the web works and happens on every site you visit. Cloudflare acts as a processor for that traffic under the data processing addendum incorporated into its standard terms, which means it handles the data to run the service and not for its own purposes. The account dashboard shows totals — how many requests arrived and roughly from where — and nothing that identifies a reader; no profile of you is built, here or there.

If you send an email

Your email address, your name if you give it, and whatever you write are received and read. They are used only to answer you. They are not added to a mailing list, not used for marketing and not passed to anyone else. The mailbox is an ordinary personal Gmail account, so Google holds the message the way an email provider does, under its own published terms rather than under any agreement specific to this site — there is no business arrangement behind it, and it would be wrong to imply one. If that matters to you, write knowing it.

Please do not send clinical details, and what happens if you do

This address cannot give advice about your own teeth, and nothing sent to it makes anyone your dentist. Please do not send symptoms, photographs, medical history or anything else about your own health: those questions belong with a dentist who can examine you, and the urgent care page gives the route for each of the four UK nations. Health information is never asked for here. If some arrives anyway it is not used, not shared and not filed anywhere — the reply points you to somewhere that can actually help, and the message is then deleted at once rather than kept for the period below.

How long emails are kept

Twelve months after the last message in an exchange, and then deleted. If you would like yours deleted sooner, ask and it will be. Two things can hold a message past twelve months: a legal obligation to keep it, and an unresolved complaint or dispute that it is evidence in. Nothing else does, and nothing is kept because it might be useful one day. Deleting a message removes it from the mailbox; Google's own policy says there can be a delay before copies clear from its active and backup systems, which is true of any email provider and is not something this site can speed up.

Who is responsible for this

Hamid Choudhary, in a personal capacity — the dentist who writes this site. Not a practice, not a company, and nobody else. In data protection language he is the controller for the small amount of personal data described here. You can reach him at hucdental@gmail.com, which is also the address for any of the requests in the rights section below.

Why we are allowed to do this

UK data protection law requires a lawful basis for handling personal data, and says which one. For the technical information the host processes to deliver a page and keep the site up, and for reading and answering an email you send, the basis is legitimate interests: running a website, and replying to someone who has written to you. You can object to either, and the section below says how. No special category data — which in law includes anything about your health — is asked for or wanted, nothing here is built to receive it, and anything of that kind that arrives unasked is deleted rather than relied on for anything.

Whether anything leaves the UK

Yes, and it is worth saying plainly rather than claiming otherwise. Both providers are United States companies running global networks, so the technical information Cloudflare processes to serve a page, and an email you send to the Gmail address, may be handled on servers outside the United Kingdom. Nothing here promises UK-only storage, because neither service offers it on these terms. Each provider publishes the safeguards it relies on for transfers of this kind: both say they comply with the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension, and Cloudflare's addendum also applies the standard contractual clauses as amended by the Information Commissioner's international data transfer addendum. Those are the providers' own arrangements, published by them and not anything specific to this site. If you would rather not have an email of yours handled that way, do not send one — nothing here needs you to, and the guides are there to read either way.

Your rights

You can ask what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, object to its use, and ask for a copy. Ask at hucdental@gmail.com. If you are not satisfied with the answer, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, which regulates data protection in the UK.