Privacy Policy — Dr. Yusuf Shieba

Last updated: 12 September 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what information is collected when you use drshieba.com (the "Site"), why it is collected, how it is stored, and the choices you have. Please read it together with our Terms of Use and Medical Disclaimer.

1. Who is responsible for your data

This Site is operated by the office of Dr. Yusuf Shieba, Lecturer and Consultant of Cardiothoracic Surgery. For any question about this policy, or to exercise the rights described in section 10, contact us at admin@drshieba.com.

2. Information you give us

We only collect information you actively submit through the Site:

Contact form — your name, email address, and optionally a phone number, subject line, and message. You may also attach up to three images. Attached images are automatically converted and compressed, which removes embedded metadata such as camera details and GPS location.
Appointment requests — your name, phone number, email address, preferred date and time, your chosen language, and any message you add.
User accounts (only if you choose to register) — username, email address, full name, and optionally gender, date of birth, WhatsApp number, country, language preference, and a profile picture.
Course enrolment — a record of which courses you have enrolled in and your progress.

3. Information collected automatically

Article view counts. When you read an article we record that a view occurred. Your IP address is stored only as a one-way cryptographic hash, so it cannot be read back or used to identify you. It exists purely to avoid counting the same reader twice.
Session data. A session cookie keeps you signed in and protects forms against cross-site request forgery.
Server logs. Our hosting provider keeps standard access logs for security and troubleshooting.

4. Please do not send sensitive medical details

The contact and booking forms are ordinary web forms and are not a secure medical records system. Please send only what is needed to arrange an appointment or answer a general question. Do not send full medical histories, identity documents, or test results containing personal identifiers. Detailed clinical information should be discussed in consultation.

5. How your information is used

To reply to your enquiry and arrange appointments.
To operate your account and give access to courses you enrol in.
To send transactional email such as email verification and password resets.
To keep the Site secure, prevent spam and abuse, and diagnose faults.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing.

6. Cookies

The Site uses cookies for the following purposes:

Strictly necessary — session and security cookies, including the CAPTCHA that protects our forms. The Site cannot function without these.
Preferences — remembering your language (Arabic or English) and light or dark display mode.
Advertising — see section 7.

Most browsers let you block or delete cookies through their settings. Blocking strictly necessary cookies will prevent forms and sign-in from working.

7. Advertising and third-party cookies

We may display advertising supplied by Google and other third-party vendors.

Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this Site or other websites.
Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this Site and/or other sites on the Internet.
You can opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. You can opt out of third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at www.aboutads.info/choices.
Advertising is never targeted using anything you write in the contact or booking forms. We do not pass your enquiries, health-related messages, or uploaded images to advertisers.

8. How long we keep information

Contact messages and any attached images are kept while they remain clinically or administratively useful, and are deleted once they are no longer needed.
Appointment records are kept as part of the practice's ordinary scheduling records.
Account data is kept until you ask us to delete the account.
Deleting a message also permanently deletes its attached images from our server.

9. Security

Data is transmitted over an encrypted HTTPS connection. Passwords are never stored in readable form — only as salted one-way hashes. Uploaded files are restricted to images, are re-encoded on arrival, and are stored in a location where scripts cannot be executed. No system is completely secure, but we take reasonable measures appropriate to the nature of the data held.

10. Your rights

You may ask us to:

tell you what personal information we hold about you;
correct information that is wrong or out of date;
delete your account and associated data;
stop sending you non-essential email — every such message also carries an unsubscribe link.

Send requests to admin@drshieba.com. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

11. Children

The Site is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. Where a parent or guardian enquires about a child's condition, they do so on the child's behalf and remain responsible for that information.

12. External links

The Site links to external resources such as journals, PubMed records, and video platforms. Those services have their own privacy policies, which we do not control.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Site changes or as the law requires. The date at the top always shows the current version. Material changes will be made clear on this page.

14. Contact

Questions about this policy: admin@drshieba.com.