Cookie errors

[bruce_a_wallace]

I have set up a new online store that I have not had any problems with during testing. However, a few other people that I have asked to have a look at it have had the following error come up when they try to check out using internet explorer - "This shopping application requires permission to use cookies on your machine, but this has been denied...." The full error can be found at this address here If they then return to the catalog and try again it works. Does anyone have any ideas what may be causing this.

[Jacques]

Hello,

This message is often caused by firewalls such as Zonealarm or Norton when their security settings are too high (they prevent the actinic cookie from working, thus the shopping cart does not work). I've put a message on my site for customers who have this error message to temporarily disable or at least lower the settings of their firewalls.

Best Regards.

Jacques

[bruce_a_wallace]

Thanks for the reply, Jacques. That is what I thought originally too, but what I don't understand is it then works OK if they shut down their browser and then go back in.
Regards
Bruce

[Jacques]

Hello Bruce,

Some times ago I had problems on my site with the shopping cart and cookies (it happened with different browsers and different machines) : I got error messages, empty cart, ...
The weird thing was that these problems happened only from time to time. One day it worked, the next day it did not (with the same machine and same browser).

I made two things and since then everything run smoothly :
- I reduced the settings of Zonealarm on my computer (and put a warning message on the site for my customers).
- I previously had the Expiry Period for the shopping cart set to 1 hour.
I changed it to 24 hours and now the cart summary works properly with all my browsers.

Hope that help.

Jacques

P.S. : Is Bruce Wallace your real name ? If it's your name you're from Sctoland for sure

[bruce_a_wallace]

I decided to use one of my lives and logged this under my Actinic Cover agreement, but 24hrs later I have had no real feedback from them. Looks like that was money well wasted.
I have been doing a bit more digging around and suspect that it may be related to the use of a P3P compact policy. I have enabled the basci P3P policy and got one of the users who had initially experienced the problem to delete the cookie for my site and retry it. They did not experience the problem again.
The reason that I did not enable the P3P policy in the first place is because the Actinic v6 userguide (I am using v7 but a full user guide for v7 does not seem to exist) states "At the time of writing, deploying no P3P policy would appear the most prudent approach." althought it is not clear why they make this recommendation. Does anyone have any advice on this issue?

P.S. Jacques: born and raised in Africa of Irish descent and now living in England, not a drop of Scottish blood in me as far as I know. Don't worry, even I am confused!

[Nadeem]

Hi there

I decided to use one of my lives and logged this under my Actinic Cover agreement, but 24hrs later I have had no real feedback from them. Looks like that was money well wasted.

I'm sorry to hear that, did they not get in touch with you at all?

The version 7 starter guide is under "Help | Starter Guide". But help on P3P is also available on our help file. If you go to "Help | Help Topic | Content". Click on the "+" for Business Settings and you will see "Privacy Policies".

Kind Regards