How to set third-party cookies with iframe

By Gaurav Patel on December 5, 2008
How-To, Tutorial
6,687 views
15 comments

How to set third-party cookies with iframe?

I had problem with the lead base ad click tracking. I was using the iFrame to track the lead information from the advertiser site. But somehow IE is not sending any cookie information from there. Infect firefox also doesn’t send any cookie information for the first request (i.e. when the iFrame src page is called) but if you call any page from the main file (i.e. specified in the source for iFrame like image or script src), I get the cookies.

What are third-party cookies?

If you put your code on other website using iFrame which calls pages from your site, then the cookies groups are called third party cookies (as both the domains, main page source and iFrame source, are different). Other examples of third party cookies are images or other objects contained in a Web page may reside in servers different from the one holding the page. In order to show such a page, the browser downloads all these objects, possibly receiving cookies. These cookies are called third-party cookies if the server sending them is located outside the domain of the Web page.

Some browsers allow third party cookies and in some browsers, like Internet Explorer, it depends on the privacy settings of the browser. In IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) with the default privacy setting of ‘Medium’, third party cookies will be deleted.

As it turns out, there is a simple solution. If you supply a ‘compact privacy policy’ with your page, then IE will treat the cookies with respect and let them through.

The code

Just add this to the start of your page (every page where cookies will be written):

How to set p3p http header in ASP.Net?


HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("p3p", "CP=\""IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT\""")

How to set p3p http header in PHP?


header('P3P:CP="IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT"');

How to set p3p http header in JSP?


response.setHeader("P3P","CP='IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT'")

How to set p3p http header in ColdFusion?


<cfheader name="P3P" value="CP='IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT'" />

The above code will set P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences Project) header. It allows the browser (specially Internet Explorer) to through all the third-party cookies (which may be set through iFrame).

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Tags: cookies, header, P3P, Platform for Privacy Preferences Project, third party cookies

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15 Comments on “How to set third-party cookies with iframe”

senthil wrote on 2 January, 2009, 15:39
how to delete the third-party cookies, when i using p3p cookies?
murali wrote on 5 January, 2009, 17:46
hi viral,
Ur blog is quiet interesting….. Today i spend more time in ur blog…. Make it quiet more active dude…. have in touch thro’ my mail id….
Viral wrote on 5 January, 2009, 18:17
Thanks Murali for the comments…
And do visit again.. you may find more interesting things on this.
Nebu wrote on 15 January, 2009, 21:45
This exactly solves my problem thanks
jorge wrote on 20 January, 2009, 12:26
Or, you can do this in .htaccess file on APACHE:

Header set P3P “policyref=\”/w3c/p3p.xml\”, CP=\”IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT\”"
Brian wrote on 1 April, 2009, 20:08
Is this all that I have to do? Just set the P3P in the header? Do I have to create an /w3c/p3p.xml document as well? Anything else? Thanks
Gaurav wrote on 4 April, 2009, 12:09
Hello Brian, Just set the P3P header with the said values and it will do the rest
Alfredo Uribe wrote on 16 April, 2009, 21:01
Hey, it was just what i needed! thanks a lot.
Jeremy wrote on 5 May, 2009, 21:00
Works for IE, but not Safari. How do you solve the problem for Safari?
Dan wrote on 7 May, 2009, 3:55
I’m trying this with a Drupal powered site, in particular on this page http://www.clubtalk.co.uk/online-billing

I’ve tried adding the PHP code into one of the theme files but it doesn’t seem to work. Anyone know what to do when it comes to Drupal and themes?
thierry wrote on 16 May, 2009, 7:53
hi, looks great, but what is the code for asp (not .net)?

I have an asp container page calling a php page in an iframe.

I have placed this in the asp CONTAINER page:

I have placed this in the php FRAMED page:

And I am still blocked on IE7

thanks for helping…
thierry wrote on 16 May, 2009, 7:54
my code was removed so I am pasting again

hi, looks great, but what is the code for asp (not .net)?

I have an asp container page calling a php page in an iframe.

I have placed this in the asp CONTAINER page:
Response.AddHeader “P3P”,”CP=”"IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT”"”

I have placed this in the php FRAMED page:
header(’P3P:CP=”IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT”‘);

And I am still blocked on IE7

thanks for helping…
Ross wrote on 26 May, 2009, 16:38
Heya!

Thanks for this. Saved my life.

Just one thing: the code for ASP.NET is incorrect. You have too many double quotes. It should be:

HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader(”p3p”, “CP=\”IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT\”");

Thanks again,

Ross
Seph wrote on 9 June, 2009, 16:38
Hey Gaurav

Thank you for this post - it saved me quite some time. Apparently just implementing W3\’s p3p policy files isn\’t enough, these magic headers are needed to enable third party cookies in IE. Safari 4 and FF 3 seems to work without issues both before and after this.

Regards
Seph