From speaking with
@kacheston I’m confident that this cookie expiration issue is the problem I hit here and I thank her for her help. Understanding this is complex and not well documented but
this site has good information
This is most likely to hit Safari or Brave users completing the questionnaire, but is something to be aware of on Firefox too. In short, don’t leave it longer than a few days without visiting the survey website to be on the safe side. (Or for convenience use a browser that doesn’t expire cookies or allows you to turn expiration off, but that opens you up to privacy risks so zi don’t personally recommend it)
To summarise major browsers current handling of 1st party cookies (subject to change)
Brave - Depending upon how they’re set, either expire after 7 days or up to 6 months
Chrome - A maximum lifetime of 400 days
Edge - No restrictions
Firefox - Tracking cookies expire daily, others 45 days after interaction with the website
Safari - Expire after 7 days without interaction with the website or within 24 hours for known trackers
Some browsers allow you to change these settings. Others don’t. Why do they expire? It’s all about tracking prevention/protection because so many companies love sucking up our data and we love in a world of regular data breaches. It’s possibly no surprise really that Chrome and Edge do little to stop this. In this environment is doesn’t look like relying on cookies alone to save survey data is a particularly robust method. Giving people a way to login or access their survey data with a unique key or URL would probably be better.
www.cookiestatus.com