Mike Richardson from 4NoCash recently posted an announcement regarding the cause of missing credit. We encourage all users to take this cookie test, as it will hopefully prevent problems in the future.

I believe that I have determined the primary cause of missing credit. Perhaps as much as 90% of missing credit is due to this problem.

The problem lies in IE’s default cookie setting, Medium. At this setting, IE blocks “third party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy”. Third party cookies are cookies that are created or accessed by an image hosted on one server that is placed on a site hosted on another server.

For example, say you complete the eFax offer on a site. Let’s say this offer is from a fictitious affiliate company, ABC123.com. When you click on the offer, you first go to ABC123.com. They set cookies on your computer that are necessary for you and the site owner to receive credit. Then, you are directed to eFax.com. Since you actually went to ABC123.com, it was a first party - so, it’s cookies were allowed to be set.

When you have completed the eFax offer, you will often get a page such as “Congratulations! You are now a member!”. This page contains a very small invisible image. This image is hosted on the affiliate company’s server, ABC123.com. What happens is that when this special image is loaded, ABC123.com receives the cookies back that it originally gave you. Then they credit the site owner with your credit.

However, this special image, hosted from ABC123.com, is located on a page hosted at eFax.com. Generally this is not a problem. But with IE’s Medium security, it is a significant problem, because IE will not give the cookies back to ABC123.com. This is due to the fact that an image from a server other than the web page is called a third party image, and IE will not deliver cookies to a third party on the Medium privacy setting. You are receiving cookies fine, but you aren’t giving them back.

The easiest solution is to lower your cookie setting to Low. This does not make you less safe on the internet. All it does is allow some more particular cookies to work correctly.

Please take the cookie test, located at http://4nocash.com/cookies.html. If you fail the test and you use IE 6, please click on the sad face to load the tutorial. Complete the tutorial and then take the test again. You should pass the test. If you fail the first time and pass the second time, and you have completed offers in IE and did not receive credit, this is why!

If you fail the test and you use a browser other than IE please post in this thread what browser you use and any other information. Do not post if you pass the test the first time.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2006 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Free Site News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.