Cookie policy

What cookies are

A cookie is a small piece of text that a website asks your browser to keep and to send back on later requests. Other techniques do something similar — local storage and session storage keep data in the browser without sending it anywhere, and a script can hold state in the page itself. The rules about asking permission apply to all of them, not only to cookies, so this page covers them together.

The list below is what this website actually uses. It was checked in a browser against the built site rather than copied from a template, on the homepage and on the contact page, before and after the spam protection loads and after a message is submitted.

What this website uses

Apart from the two cookies described below, this website stores nothing at all: no other cookies, no local storage, no session storage, no databases in the browser, and no requests to anyone other than this website.

The contact page uses one cookie of our own:

Name

vm_contact_sent

Set by

This website (https://www.vemaprojects.be)

Purpose

Confirms that your message was sent, so that the confirmation is shown once and refreshing the page cannot send the same message twice

When

Only after you have actually submitted the contact form

Lifetime

Five minutes, and it is deleted as soon as the confirmation has been shown

Contents

The single character “1”. No identifier, no tracking value

Consent needed

No — it is strictly necessary for the service you asked for

It is also marked HttpOnly and Secure, which means scripts in the page cannot read it and it is only ever sent over an encrypted connection.

The language switcher uses one more:

Name

vematics_locale

Set by

This website (https://www.vemaprojects.be)

Purpose

Remembers the language you chose, so that the site's entry page opens in that language on a later visit

When

Only when you choose a language with the language switcher

Possible values

One of en, nl or fr. Nothing else is accepted

Lifetime

One year

Contents

The selected language code only. It does not store a name, email address or account identifier

You can delete it at any time in your browser. Without it, the site's entry page falls back to the language your browser asks for, and every language remains reachable from its own address.

Spam protection on the contact page

The contact form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which distinguishes people from bots so that the form is not abused for spam. It is used on the contact page only, and it is the only third party your browser contacts anywhere on this website: it loads from challenges.cloudflare.com, runs its check, and returns a token that our server then asks Cloudflare to verify.

In the configuration this website uses, the widget stored nothing in the browser during our checks — no cookie, no local storage, no session storage. Turnstile has an optional feature called pre-clearance, which issues a cf_clearance cookie; Cloudflare ships it switched off, and we have deliberately left it off, because this form does not need it.

What Turnstile does process is described in the privacy policy: your IP address, a TLS fingerprint, your browser's user-agent string and the site key with the website it is used on. Cloudflare states these signals are strictly necessary for detecting and blocking bots. They are used for security, never for advertising, and we do not receive them as a profile.

Security cookies from our network provider

This website is delivered through Cloudflare. Depending on which protection features are switched on for a site, Cloudflare can set its own security cookies at network level — for example when a visitor has to pass a challenge. Cloudflare documents these as strictly necessary and lists them in its cookie documentation.

We saw none of them during our checks, so we are not listing names that may not apply. If the protection configuration changes in a way that introduces one, it stays in the strictly necessary category, and this page will name it.

Why there is no cookie banner

Permission has to be asked for cookies and similar technologies that are not strictly necessary — analytics and advertising are the usual examples. Technologies that are strictly necessary to deliver the service you asked for may be used without prior consent, but they still have to be explained clearly, which is what this page does. That is the position of the Belgian Data Protection Authority, whose guidance on cookies sets out both sides of the rule.

Everything this website uses falls in the strictly necessary category: delivering the pages, protecting the form against bots, remembering for five minutes that your message went out, and remembering the language you chose yourself. There is nothing optional to agree to or refuse, so a consent banner would have no choice to offer. We would rather explain the few things we use than interrupt every visitor with a dialogue that decides nothing.

No analytics and no marketing technology

This website contains no analytics, no tag manager, no advertising or remarketing pixels, no social media trackers, no heatmaps, no session recording and no newsletter tracking. That is a deliberate decision, not an oversight — none of these is installed.

If that ever changes, the technology will not be switched on before this page and the privacy policy have been updated and valid consent has been asked for first.

Controlling cookies yourself

Every browser lets you see, refuse and delete cookies and clear stored data for a site, usually under privacy or site settings. Blocking cookies for this website does not stop you reading it. Two things would change: on the contact page, without our confirmation cookie the page cannot tell you that your message was sent, even though it was; and the site's entry page would no longer remember the language you chose.

Questions

Write to sales@vemaprojects.be. The privacy policy explains what happens to personal data more broadly, and the legal notice identifies the company behind this website.