Re: lynx-dev LYNX: cookies, site doesn't think I have them.

[David Woolley]

>    Internet Explorer users
>    From the menu bar, choose Edit, Preferences, Receiving Files,
>    Cookies, and click on 'never ask' on the pulldown menu by 'when
>    receiving cookies'.

This is irresponsible advice; people who take such requests at face value
are those most vulnerable to social engineering security attacks.  (Mellissa
and friends required people to override security features without thinking.)
You should never obey such instructions unless you have absolute trust in
the advisor - and, as Guardian cannot know all about your views on
privacy, I have to take the position that it is impossible to give them
absolute trust in the light of their giving this advice - or you have
independently researched the subject.  With a lot more information on
the down side of cookies, it might just have been acceptable to say
set the option to warn for all cookies and then manually accept those
from Guardian.

> 
>    Internet Explorer 3 and lower
>    Cookies are automatically enabled. (Users accessing the site from PCs

IE 2 and below definitely don't support cookies.  IE 3, as far as I remember
has them DISABLED by default!  It was IE4 where commercial considerations
won over privacy ones.

Your actual problem should show in a trace log and is probably due to
a broken, probably insecure, form of cookie in the initial cookie
test.

One long term solution would be to write to Guardian, but say that you
are not prepared to permanently enable cookies, for privacy reasons,
and that having to enable and disable them for each session is so much
more trouble than using an HTTP style login, that you will take your
business elsewhere.