Access Info.

To access the member area you will need:

• your CFIB Member ID as it appears on all mailings from CFIB, ie: 12345>
• your password which is the first 3 characters of your postal code where you receive CFIB mailing, ie: P3E

If you are still unsuccessful. e-mail us your name, the name of your business and your Member Id.

Note, because the CFIB MemberNet is a secure site, please check your browser options to ensure that you accept "cookies" (see next item).

What are "cookies".

A cookie is a tiny bit of text we're asking permission to place on your computer's hard drive. Its purpose is to help keep this connection alive.

Computers that "serve" the web don't automatically maintain a "relationship" between users.  They simply dish out pages to whomever asks.  When you access secure sites, like this one, we need to control who sees what.  So, after you sign in we send back a little identifier, or cookie, to your computer.  Thereafter, when you request a secure document, the cookie accompanies your request and the "server" knows it ok to respond.

Cookies have a short life (about 15 minutes).  So if you go for a coffee, you'll find that the computer has eaten your cookie and you will have to sign in again.

Do not fear cookies.  There is no sinister plot to snoop in your computer looking for secrets.  Cookies are bits of data - not programs, and as such cannot contain viruses.

Enabling the use of cookies is a browser option.  If you disable their use, you restrict yourself to "static" sites and miss out on all the really solid stuff.   However, it's good practice to always guard against unnecessary intrusion into your computer from sites that are not familiar or trustworthy.

What's a URL?

It stands for "Uniform Resource Locator" which is a standardized way for everyone to find everyone else.  Put simply, it's the web address of a particular site or page.  When you enter an address into your web browser you do not need to preface the URL with the "http://" part - most modern browsers will include it for you when it checks the address.

If a URL end's in "/" it means that you are addressing a page in a folder.  Since you have not specified a specific page, the Server tries to find a default page to open, such as "index.htm" or "default.asp". If one doesn't exist, then you'll get some weird error.

If the URL ends in ".htm" or ".html" then it means you are asking the server to send you a static or basic page and not to perform any "logic" or do anything sexy before sending it.  However, increasingly you will see URL's end with ".asp" which is Microsoft's way of identifying an "active server page" that can contain embedded logic.  This logic is generally in the form of a basic program or "script" (Java Script, VB Script, etc).   The server executes the script then "creates" the html page in some pre programmed fashion.  This approach, which our secure sites use, is necessary to perform database lookups, etc.