CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptcookiesuser-interfacecoldfusionweb
Eric Carlisle
Eric Carlisle

Reputation: 139

Cookies not always saving > triggering cookie based functionaity

I've been hunting a cookie-related (at least, I think it is) issue and I have little data to go on. I apologize for the vague description. Any theories or guidance would be appreciated.

I have a site with several cookie-dependent features. Most of the time it's promotional content with the following general rule:

if cookie exists for this functionality, show promotional content once and set the cookie. If cookie exists, don't show promotional content.

I'm getting some customer feedback stating that the promotional content is showing more than once. Some customers state it shows with every page load. Internally I've noticed this a bit with OpinionLab surveys that are supposed to appear only once, but appear multiple times over a certain period - and yes, this seems to affect both our native cookie-setting code (ColdFusion) as well as 3rd-party APIs (JavaScript).

I've done all the diligence on our side to test locally and ensure proper cookie expiration, but we're not able to recreate the issue locally. We're also getting the same feedback from users with several browsers (IE, Chrome, Safari) on different OSes. The going theory is "user has cookies disabled and code doesn't check for cookie support, so they get spammed with promotional content". That makes sense, but it's happening enough where I'm doubting that the issue is isolated to people that disable cookies in their browser.

I'm wondering if there could be some software that the user has installed (adware blocker, antivirus, browser toolbar) that could be creating this experience across browsers. I'm also (digging deep) wondering if there are any network conditions (proxy server, ISP firewall, caching servers) that could be interfering with the users' experience.

As stated, I know this is pretty vague. At this point I'm just looking for new directions to investigate. Thanks in advance for any ideas!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 336

Answers (1)

Mark A Kruger
Mark A Kruger

Reputation: 7193

Eric, Can you post your cookie code - or a prototype? There are lots of nuances to setting cookies in CF.

You probably already know this but cookies are domain dependent. And yes, lots of internet security software out there will block certain cookies - but your users would likely know that because they would (or should) see it often. If you can find a user to work with have him try adding your domain to "trusted sites" to help eliminate that possibility - or take a survey of the various forms of security software that your problem users (user's with problems... not "problem users per se - ha) are having.

Upvotes: 2

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