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Self-Destructing Cookies – add-on for Firefox

addons.mozilla.org

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Re: Self-Destructing Cookies – add-on for Firefox

#11

Post by stormbrew »

dotmanish wrote: post #9

What looks to me as a counter-feature is that if I'm logged in to GMail, and want to stay logged-in, I have to whitelist the "google.com" cookies. Wouldn't that allow all the Adwords tracking cookies as well, across sites?

I wonder if a better (if probably impractical approach for in a plugin) approach would be to scope off-site cookies to the containing page's domain. So an ad network's cookies on facebook.com wouldn't be shared with them on google.com. This would eliminate a lot of the "follow you around the internet" privacy issues without forcing manual configuration.

Re: Self-Destructing Cookies – add-on for Firefox

#13

Post by greenyoda »

There's another nice cookie manager for Firefox called Cookie Monster:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste...

It allows you to maintain a white-list of sites that are allowed to set cookies and allows you to pick whether the cookies the site sets are persistent or discarded at the end of the current browser session.

Re: Self-Destructing Cookies – add-on for Firefox

#14

Post by dotmanish »

Here is how I am using this:

1. Install the add-on.

2. Panic that it has deleted all "not open now" websites' cookies.

3. Choose the option to "Suspend Operation" via the add-on icon.

4. Repeatedly "Undelete" all cookies until it's all done.

5. Keep the add-on suspended.

6. Now, for the next few days, I will browse like normal, but will remember to "whitelist" the websites I like to stay logged-in (Hacker News, Webmail, etc.) by clicking on the add-on icon. Remember, it is still "Suspended".

7. After a few days of usage (and when I've re-visited enough number of my regular websites), I will "Resume Operation" on the add-on, where it can start destroying the rest of the cookies like anything.

I think the "Training Period" above in point 6 should have been by default. Somehow.

Re: Self-Destructing Cookies – add-on for Firefox

#15

Post by _lce0 »

k_bx wrote: post #6

As I understand -- I'll have to sign in to every website I visit each time? (or manage white-list) Well, then it seems like a not a fit for me. But still, thanks for reminding that I can disable 3rd-party cookies -- I just did that for my firefox.

the addon places an icon below in the browser, in the addon bar; there you can fine-tune the cookie policy for the current site, it's a two clicks operation. Once you had setup your common sites you can completely forget about cookies.

Re: Self-Destructing Cookies – add-on for Firefox

#16

Post by malandrew »

benologist wrote: post #10
malandrew wrote: post #5

Add a feature where the plugin collects all cookies that are commonly blocked and then shares that info back to a server. With that info that plugin can get a list of all the cookies on a page and query the server to rank those cookies from most blocked to least blocked. This way users of this plugin can rely on the wisdom of the crowds to quickly see which cooks people who know better commonly block. Should every us…

Ghostery does that although I'm not sure if they share that data back.

I reckon it could be stored and shared via a distributed hash table such as Kademlia. This has the advantage of anonymizing the data. When your computer connects to mine to get rankings for a site, it doesn't know if data I provide is based on my decisions or the aggregate decisions of millions of people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia

Re: Self-Destructing Cookies – add-on for Firefox

#17

Post by mehrzad »

greenyoda wrote: post #13

There's another nice cookie manager for Firefox called Cookie Monster: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste... It allows you to maintain a white-list of sites that are allowed to set cookies and allows you to pick whether the cookies the site sets are persistent or discarded at the end of the current browser session.

...which is a built-in Firefox feature.

Re: Self-Destructing Cookies – add-on for Firefox

#18

Post by greenyoda »

mehrzad wrote: post #17
greenyoda wrote: post #13

There's another nice cookie manager for Firefox called Cookie Monster: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste... It allows you to maintain a white-list of sites that are allowed to set cookies and allows you to pick whether the cookies the site sets are persistent or discarded at the end of the current browser session.

...which is a built-in Firefox feature.

Firefox does allow you to keep a white-list of cookie-enabled sites, but you have to go to the Options menu to do this. Cookie Monster let's you set cookie permissions for the page you're currently visiting by clicking on an icon in the status bar. The icon also gives you a visual indication of what the current page's settings are. It's essentially a nicer user interface on top of the built-in Firefox functionality.
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