I writing a Privacy Policy and was wondering "exactly" what does SMF cookies record?
As far as I gather: functional cookies only.
Cookies meant to store session and login information.
The physical cookie itself records the user id and the session id. The session id points to the session itself which records all kinds of fun information, like the URL the user is currently at, the user agent the user is currently using, and various other transient information.
Using internet explorer go to the SMF forum, press F12 and the Developer Tools will pop up.
Select Cache then Cookie Information and it will show you all the cookies set and what they contain.
But each forum installation will be different depending on what add ons and tracking you may be using.
This is just the first cookie from the site, it looks like they have set 13 cookies in total
Cookie Information - http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=post;topic=496834.0;last_msg=3485952
NAME SMFCookieDE001
VALUE a%3A4%3A%7Bi%3A0%3Bs%3A5%3A%2251148%22%3Bi%3A1%3Bs%3A40%3A%224bf911948f7a859b75cfd4dbbef625082230431b%22%3Bi%3A2%3Bi%3A1495375499%3Bi%3A3%3Bi%3A2%3B%7D
DOMAIN simplemachines.org
PATH /
EXPIRES 21/05/2017 14:04:59
The other cookies are from other things here, like the MW integration, the ads etc.
That cookie is the main one. Convert the code back from URL encoding and you'll find it is a PHP serialized array...
OK, thanks guys.
I tried this search engine for cookies. It's German but i think it's not too hard to understand the output for non native-speakers. Just search for the URL of your board and it tells you which cookies it uses:
http://b-versio.verbraucher-sicher-online.de/jcookie/index.jsp
When I enter my domain I get five smf-cookies:
"PHPSESSID"
"__utma"
"__utmb"
"__utmc"
"__utmz"
and one third-party-cookie:
"id" Domain: .doubleclick.net
I am wondering where this one comes from. I'm not aware of any incidents with doubleclick.net, nor did I ever have cookies (or even tea) with doubleclick. And since we don't have ads on our site: Does it come with the normal installation? From a Mod? Or as it is google: could it be related to Webmaster-Tools?
These are the mods our forum uses:
1. SMF 1.1.15 Update 1.0 [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
2. SMF 1.0.22 / 1.1.16 Update 1.0 [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
3. Optimus Brave 1.8.5 [ Uninstall ] [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
4. Pretty URLs 1.0 [ Uninstall ] [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
5. SimplePortal 2.3.5 [ Uninstall ] [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
6. Ohara YouTube Embed 1.0 [ Uninstall ] [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
7. Bad Behavior mod 1.5.13 [ Uninstall ] [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
8. Similar Topics 0.3 [ Uninstall ] [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
9. SMF4iPhone-Mod 1.1 [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
10. SMF 2.0.3 Update 1.0 [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
11. Mobile Device Detect 0.2.2 [ Uninstall ] [ List Files ] [ Delete ]
12. SMF 2.0.4 Update 1.0
PHPSESSID is generated automatically by PHP.
__utm cookies are all related to Google Analytics
DoubleClick.net is a subsidiary of Google related to advertising but can be related to Google Analytics too
Thanks Arantor. But I never signed up or in for Google-Analytics... So would you think it's got to be Google Webmaster-Tools?
It could even conceivably come with YouTube, being Google owned and showing ads, of course...
aah...!
A point I didn't think of. Thanks.