Virtual Cabinet® Portal and Cookies

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a very small text file often used by websites to store relevant text data for later use. Typical uses include authentication, shopping cart contents, user's preferences etc.

A cookie is harmless. To quote from Wikipedia, Cookies are not software. They cannot be programmed, cannot carry viruses, and cannot install malware on the host computer.

Of course, technology is often open to abuse and cookies have received bad press as they are used by advertising websites to track a user's browsing activity (known as third-party or tracking cookies) and then display targeted adverts.

Why does Virtual Cabinet Portal use cookies?

We take security very seriously and employ tried-and-tested techniques to ensure that only you can access your data.

One of the techniques we use is to store encrypted authentication data in a cookie on your computer. Every time you view a page or access a document on the Virtual Cabinet Portal, this cookie is checked to make sure that you have been authenticated and are allowed to view the page or document.

Without this cookie, you would need to enter your e-mail address and password repeatedly. It is therefore strictly necessary to the operation of functionality on this site. By logging into the Virtual Cabinet Portal, you are accepting that this authentication cookie will be stored by your web browser.

We also store your e-mail address in a cookie if you tick the 'Remember my e-mail address next time' option on the login page. If you are using someone else's computer or if you do not want to store your e-mail address for future use, simply do not tick this box.

We use Google Analytics to collect information about visitor behaviour on our website so that we can improve our services. Google Analytics stores information about what pages are visited, the devices used to visit them, how long people are on the site, how they got here and what they click on. This Analytics data is collected via a JavaScript tag in the pages of our site and is not tied to personally identifiable information so this information cannot be used to identify who you are.

We do not allow any third-party cookies.

Can I access the Virtual Cabinet Portal without enabling cookies?

The authentication cookie is required in order for us to secure your data so, unfortunately, you can only use the Virtual Cabinet Portal if you enable cookies.

Most modern browsers allow you to enable cookies for individual sites and you can usually block all third-party cookies.

Please see the Virtual Cabinet Portal Privacy Policy for more information.