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Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 12:28 pm
by dsteuer
Hi friends,
I'm asking to get clarification if flatpress is DSGVO compliant. Or do we need some kind of cookie banner?
Just curious...

Detlef

Re: Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 2:42 pm
by Tongara
Good question, I'm sure someone here will let you know soon enough.

Regardless, I think there is a plugin here on the wiki for this.
https://wiki.flatpress.org/res:plugins: ... _directive

More info on this plugin here, too:
https://www.gsys.biz/blog/eu-cookie-directive-plugin

Even if it's not exactly what you're looking for, I'm sure you could adapt it for such.

Re: Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 5:57 pm
by Arvid
Hi,

FlatPress sets different kinds of cookies.
  • At first, a session cookie. https://gdpr.eu/cookies/ says about this:
    Strictly necessary cookies — These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies. While it is not required to obtain consent for these cookies, what they do and why they are necessary should be explained to the user.
    (Emphasis by me.)
  • Next is cookies that store your name, email, and website when commenting on a FlatPress blog. (So if you comment again later, your data is already there.) It seems to be a good idea to clarify that to your visitors.
  • And finally, FlatPress stores extra cookies when logging into the admin panel. But this has nothing to do with your visitors.
I am not a lawyer (and this is no legal advice), but in my understanding you do not need a cookie consent dialog for vanilla FlatPress, but you should mention the session and comment cookies in your privacy policy. Comment cookies may be explicitly mentioned directly next to the send button in the comment section of each entry.

Be aware that anything added to vanilla FlatPress may change the game immediately: Third-party plugins, social media buttons, analytics tools, ad programs, or assets like fonts or scripts loaded from CDNs.

Browsers allow you to view the data websites store on your computer; as for Firefox, the Storage Inspector does this job. In Chrome, use the DevTools.

All the best,
Arvid

Re: Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:39 pm
by dsteuer
Thank you both for the answers!

Detlef

Re: Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 4:58 pm
by Arvid
Thinking about this a little longer, I doubt we really need the comment cookies. Thinking about removing them.

What's your opinion?

Re: Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:33 pm
by dsteuer
I did not look into the source code. But it is an easy question: If not needed to provide function, remove. :-)

Detlef

Re: Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2020 8:08 pm
by dsteuer
Arvid wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 4:58 pm Thinking about this a little longer, I doubt we really need the comment cookies. Thinking about removing them.

What's your opinion?
I simply commented out all comment related cookies in comments.php. What remains simply works :-)
As far as I can see these cookies aren't used anywhere besides being set. But this was done without understanding all of flatpress,
so pls check.

Detlef

Re: Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2020 7:12 pm
by Arvid
Thank you for your suggestion, I just removed the comment cookies from FlatPress; this will be part of version 1.2.
The price of having to enter your data on each comment is quite reasonable for having a system that works without any cookies (besides the session cookie) - and thus having no hassle with GDPR.

Re: Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2020 11:03 pm
by Tongara
Yeah, that seems fine to me, especially given that most browsers can be set to store their own stuff for autofill anyway (and seem to do so by default unless you tell it not to!).

Not that I use the default comment system anyway, but it is a good thing for anyone who does!

Re: Does flatpress use cookies?

Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 6:18 am
by Arvid
Thanks for your feedback, Tongara.
Tongara wrote: Sat Oct 24, 2020 11:03 pmmost browsers can be set to store their own stuff for autofill anyway
Yep, this is what I thought as well. I don't expect anyone to mind about the missing cookie storage.