[horde] Britain’s “cookie law” prohibits tracking without consent

[Simon Brereton]

On 30 May 2012 12:31, Andrew Morgan <morgan at orst.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 30 May 2012, Simon Brereton wrote:
>
>> Since I may to pay attention to this, can you tell me what impact not
>> accepting cookies will have on Horde/Imp/etc?
>>
>>
>>
>> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/from-now-on-britains-cookie-law-prohibits-tracking-without-consent/
>>
>>
>>
>> Also, is there any easy way to put up a MOTD for this?
>
>
> I use imp/config/motd.php in my old IMP4 installation.  I don't know if the
> same file exists in IMP5.  BTW, I'm using IMP for authentication, so this
> displays on the login page.

/usr/share/horde4/config/motd.php says to use motd.local.php, but I
can't find anything in the config tool to set this up.  I'm not sure
my PHP skills are any good either...

mail:~# grep -inr motd /usr/share/horde4/config/conf.php returns
nothing (and like you, I remember this being in the setup for H3/Imp4)



> I suggest you display a message saying they must accept cookies if they want
> to use the service.  That covers the consent part.

That's true - and applies as per the particulars of this law.  I was
just wondering what effect not accepting cookies would have.  There is
this warning in the config tool:
	
Should we only allow session information to be stored in a session
cookie and not be passed by URL (GET) parameters? This is on by
default because passing session information in the URL is a security
risk. Consider carefully before turning it off. Cookies must be
working and enabled in the browser though, or you won't be able to
login to Horde. If false, session information will be passed via both
the URL and cookies.

Which seems pretty emphatic about the need to accept cookies.  It
would be nice if Horde could be made to function without them though.


> I wonder, is it really "tracking" if the cookies are merely used for the
> application functionality?

Good question.  As far as I understand, in common with a lot of
internet legislation these days, that hasn't been addressed or thought
out.  I could be wrong though.

Simon