Cookie Policy

We use cookies and similar tools across our websites to improve the performance and enhance your user experience. This policy explains how we do that.

What are cookies?

Here is a brief video on how Cookies work (Presented by Google)

Or read the descriptive version:

Cookies are small text files which a website may put on your computer or mobile device when you first visit a site or page. The cookie will help the website, or another website, to recognise your device the next time you visit. Web beacons or other similar files can also do the same thing. We use the term "cookies" in this policy to refer to all files that collect information in this way.

There are many functions cookies serve. For example, they can help us to remember your username and preferences, analyse how well our website is performing, or even allow us to recommend content we believe will be most relevant to you.

Certain cookies contain personal information – for example, if you click to "remember me" when logging in, a cookie will store your username. Most cookies won't collect information that identifies you, and will instead collect more general information such as how users arrive at and use our websites, or a user's geographic location.

What sort of cookies do we use on our websites?

Generally, we use the following functions:

Essential cookies

Some cookies are essential for the operation of our website. For example, some cookies allow us to identify that you have certain features turned on and off in your browser.

Performance Cookies

We utilise other cookies to analyse how our visitors use our websites and to monitor website performance with tools like Google analytics (see: https://developers.google.com/analytics/resources/concepts/gaConceptsCookies for more information on how Google's cookies work). This allows us to provide a high quality experience by quickly identifying and fixing any issues that arise. For example, we might use performance cookies to keep track of which pages are most popular, which method of linking between pages is most effective, and to determine why some pages are receiving error messages.

Functionality Cookies

We use functionality cookies to allow us to remember your preferences. For example, cookies save you the trouble of typing in your username every time you access the site, and recall your customisation preferences, such as which regional settings you set like time zones.

We also use functionality cookies to provide you with enhanced services such as allowing you to watch a video online or allow access to restricted content reserved for our clients rather than for the public.

Can a website user block cookies?

As we've explained above, cookies help you to get the most out of our websites.

The first time you accessed our website, you should have seen a notice (usually shown on every page at the bottom left) or overlay which explained that by continuing to access our site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.

However, if you do wish to disable our cookies then please follow the instructions on our "Manage your cookies and site data" page.

Please remember that if you do choose to disable cookies, you may find that certain sections of our website do not work properly

Do we track whether users open our emails?

Our subscription emails may contain a single, campaign-unique "web beacon pixel" to tell us whether our emails are opened and verify any clicks through to links or advertisements within the email. We may use this information for purposes including determining which of our emails are more interesting to users and to query whether users who do not open our emails wish to continue receiving them. The pixel will be deleted when you delete the email. If you do not wish the pixel to be downloaded to your device, you should select to receive emails from us in plain text rather than HTML.

More Information

More detail on how businesses use cookies is available at www.allaboutcookies.org.

If you have any queries regarding this Cookie Policy please contact us by e-mail at info@vixsoft.co.uk