CODEWITHSUNDEEP
facebook
Adam
Adam

Reputation: 6132

Behavior of page when loaded into Facebook application tab

When a user visits my site "www.mysite.com" I set a cookie for that specific user. Next the user goes to Facebook, lands on an application tab and clicks the like button. An external page "www.mysite.com/facebooktab.html" is loaded into the Facebook canvas. 1. Now, do I have access from facebooktab.html to the cookie I set on www.mysite.com earlier? 2. Does the page loaded into Facebook show the same behaviour as when I would just visit www.mysite.com/facebooktab.html in my browser, except that when the page is loaded within Facebook I have some additional user properties available to me (since user is logged in in Facebook)?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 509

Answers (1)

Floyd Wilburn
Floyd Wilburn

Reputation: 1842

The critical difference between the two scenarios is that when your page is loaded directly, the cookies you set/read are "first party" cookies; when your page is loaded inside the Facebook framework, the cookies become "third party". Each browser has its own set of rules, but they all apply different policies to third-party cookies versus first party cookies. You mentioned you are initially setting the cookie directly on your website (first-party mode), and then only reading it when the page is inside Facebook (third-party mode). Most browsers will allow that with no restrictions, as they only apply stricter third-party policies to the writing of cookies and not reading. The exception is Firefox, which lumps reading and writing permissions together. If a Firefox user has cleared the "Accept third-party cookies" box in their configuration, your page on Facebook will not be able to read the cookie you set earlier even though it was set directly on your website.

Upvotes: 1

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