Internet Explorer 11 won't set cookies on a site

Question

For some reason IE11 (only IE11, tested with other IE9 and IE10) won't create a session on a site i've been working on. So this means that a basic functionality such as site login won't work.

On other browsers this is working perfectly.

I researched a bit and found out that IE won't work with domains with underscore.. but my domain doesn't have one so what could be the problem? Thanks!

Solution 1

IE 11 does not like a domain value in the cookie. Leave it empty.

Wrong for IE 11:

Set-Cookie: kohanasession=foobar; expires=Tue, 09-Apr-2016 01:01:01 GMT; path=/; domain=tc.mk; httponly

Correct for IE 11:

Set-Cookie: kohanasession=foobar; expires=Tue, 09-Apr-2016 01:01:01 GMT; path=/; httponly

Solution 2

This may only apply to another-domain cookies, but if someone finds this via Google (like I did) this may help.

IE11 may not set cookies depending on its Privacy settings.

This worked for me:

(Internet Options -> Privacy -> Advanced -> enable all cookie cases there)

Solution 3

I know this is old, but hopefully this helps someone in the future. You cannot have a blank expires=; value in a cookie in IE11. You just have to leave the expires field out altogether.

Solution 4

I had this issue because I was running a single-page Vue application. I was setting the cookie in one route, then immediately routing to a different "page". However, it seems like IE won't send cookies until next page load. So instead of using pushState, I had to force the browser to re-load the page.

Solution 5

I recently had this problem myself. In my case, the problem was caused by executing the "ClearAuthenticationCache" command upon successful login. The command was executed to remove HTTP authentication, but it turns out that it will remove session cookies as well.

So I would recommend removing the "ClearAuthenticationCache" call if you executing it after a login.

document.execCommand("ClearAuthenticationCache");

For more information, please see the following link: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ieinternals/2010/04/04/understanding-session-lifetime/

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Comments

[1DMF]

Did you find a resolve? I am experiencing the same problem with a member who's IE11 on Win 8 refuses to accept the session cookie,

[prototype]

I haven't found a solution..

[1DMF]

I've added the domain to trusted sites, I've forced acceptance of cookies through the security settings, I've reset the browser, deleted all data, but still IE11 refuses to accept the session cookie. Google Chrome works fine as does FireFox, but IE won't budge.

[Atherion]

I too am having this problem, already 2 users stating they can't login to my site. Whats going one, I think there is a bug somewhere.

[Colin R. Turner]

Did we find an answer to this problem? I have the same problem. Tried removing domain attribute and no difference.

[Chrissi]

Underscore is not an allowed domain name character according to RFC1035. As such, the hint you've found that IE is not working with one is ... bizarre.

[bebbo]

@freeworlder can you be more specific? Maybe you have multiple errors in your cookie setting code.

[Matt Montag]

Hi @bebbo, do you have a reference to verify your claim?

[bebbo]

@Matt: it solved the problem in the project I was working.

[Tushar]

@bebbo After searching a lot I found this answer and finally this solution worked. Thank you man!

[leiavoia]

More info: IE11 does accept a domain but it does not accept domains of localhost or machine names without a TLD like http://myservername/. It also apparently chokes on subdomains with underscores. See: weblog.west-wind.com/posts/2012/Apr/25/…

[arif.khan.b]

I was struggling to figure out the issue with angular code. Your suggestion helped me resolve this issue thanks

[s.meijer]

Thanks @leiavoia! That's it! This had me while debugging an issue on localhost. Adding 127.0.0.1 home.local to /etc/hosts and using that domain instead, fixed my issues.