West Midlands CHCs IT Support Group

Most West Midlands CHCs are now beginning to consider the idea of setting up their own World Wide Web sites or home pages as some may know them as.

It is therefore important that guidelines are put into place by the IT Support Group to ensure that these web sites do not infringe any laws or other guidelines such as the Data Protection Act and copyright laws.

Below are some guidelines that we recommend CHCs consider and follow when setting up their sites.

1. Privacy and the Data Protection Act

As with all printed matter and data storage methods, the Internet is subject to the restrictions and regulations that form the Data Protection Act.

CHCs are obliged by law to comply with the Data Protection Act at all times and data on your web sites should reflect this. As with printed and stored data, information on your web site should be accurate, truthful and you must get the (preferably written) permission of the persons you wish to feature on your web site, especially if you intend to publish address or telephone numbers. In fact, it is generally advised that CHCs do not put such information on their sites.

CHCs should respect people's privacy at all times when publishing web sites. Under no circumstances must confidential information be put on web sites or even in your web space (the space you have been given for your web site).

 

2. Copyright, intellectual copyright and courtesy

As with printed documents, copyright laws apply to web sites. When designing web sites CHCs should pay strict attention to any copyright laws that they may be infringing including that of "intellectual copyright" which are items that do not official copyright but are the property of its author.

When using images, sounds, animation or files on your web sites you must ensure that they are not copyrighted. If they are then you may have to either request permission or make a payment for their use. Some people may let you use their property so long as you credit them on your site, if requested you should do this as soon as possible.

Even if items are not strictly copyrighted it is still common Internet courtesy to credit the creators of the items on your web site so if you do use pictures or other files that have been given to you for free then please put some form of credit to their creators on your site and if you like put a link to the creator's own web site on yours.

 

3. Security

Your web site is not run from your office's computers. Therefore you may feel that you are under no security threat from outsiders. This is a false sense of security.

If a hacker or other person of malicious intent gains access to your web space then he/she can do some very real damage:-

• they have ruin your site or redesign it with profanities and obscene images or simply with derogatory remarks.
• they could leave a virus hidden in your web site files so if you fetch them from your web space and attempt to open them you would be infected.
• they could infect your data files (such as an on-line Annual Report) with a virus or incorrect, derogatory information.
• if they have managed to access your web site's directory they may then use this access to disrupt or damage your Internet Service Provider's main system.

Therefore, you MUST NOT under any circumstances give your Internet access password to anyone. If you out-source your web site's design you should ensure that they are of integrity before giving them your password or better still simply tell them to give the web site files on disk and that you will upload (send the files to your web space) them yourself.

Your web space comes with your subscription and this will cost you no more to run. What may cost you money is the actual fees due for web site design or graphics work.

As with all expenditure, you should be cost-effective when purchasing services for your web site. Get value for money and remember that many web site services such as counters and forms are available for free.