Privacy policy

Who is responsible

Your Child’s Anaesthetic (paediatricanaesthesia.com.au) is published by Dr Walid Aly, Specialist Anaesthetist (ABN 67 403 071 186), and maintained for him by Altitude Creative. “We” in this policy means Dr Aly and the people who help him run the website and answer messages sent through it.

What we receive

Through the contact form: your name, your email address, a phone number if you choose to give one, whether you are a parent or carer, a health professional or someone else, and your message.

By phone: whatever you choose to tell us, so that we can respond.

The form asks you not to include your child’s name, date of birth or medical details. If you send them anyway, we treat them as sensitive health information, use them only to reply, and suggest a more suitable way to talk.

What the website records by itself

Like any website, the server keeps standard access logs (such as IP address, browser, date and pages requested) to keep the site running and to look into misuse.

To keep spam out, the contact page asks the server for a short-lived signed code that records only the time it was issued, and the server counts recent messages from each connection for about an hour. That count is filed under a scrambled (hashed) version of the IP address and contains only times.

Visitor statistics (Google Analytics)

We count how the guide is used so that we can keep improving it. For this we use Google Analytics 4, loaded by Google Tag Manager. It tells us which pages are read, how readers found the guide, what kind of device and browser they use, roughly where they are (to the level of a city or region) and whether a contact message was sent.

A random identifier is saved in cookies called _ga and _ga_… for up to two years so that repeat visits can be counted. Google Analytics doesn’t store IP addresses and receives nothing you type into the form, and we only ever see grouped figures, never individual families. Its advertising features are off, and the data is not used for ads or remarketing. Google may keep the data in other countries, including the United States.

To stop it, turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser: the analytics code then doesn’t load. Blocking cookies, or Google’s opt-out add-on, works too.

What the website does not do

• no advertising pixels, remarketing tags or social media trackers
• no cookies apart from the analytics cookies described above
• no copy of your message is stored on the web server: the form passes it on by email
• no requests for payment details.

How we use and share it

We use your details to reply to you and to keep the website secure, and for nothing else. We do not use them for marketing without your express agreement, and we never sell or rent them.

Your message may be read by Dr Aly and by people helping him reply, who keep it confidential, and it passes through the email, hosting and IT services that make the website work. The website is hosted on servers in North America and some of these services may hold data outside Australia. We take reasonable steps to make sure they protect it consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles. We share personal information with anyone else only with your consent or where the law requires or allows it.

Your child’s care is separate

This website is not used to provide care. If your child is cared for by a hospital, surgeon or anaesthetist, their health information is handled by those services under their own privacy policies.

Security and how long we keep it

The website is only available over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection, and messages go to a business email account. We keep personal information only as long as we need it to deal with your message, or as the law requires. If a data breach is likely to cause serious harm, we will tell the people affected and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.

Seeing or correcting your information

You can ask what personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it. Use the contact page or phone 0411 965 272. We may need to confirm who you are first, and we aim to reply within 30 days.

Concerns and complaints

Please tell us first if you are unhappy with how we have handled your information. If our response does not resolve it, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, or Victoria’s Health Complaints Commissioner.

Changes

We may update this policy. The “last updated” date at the top shows the current version.