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I whitelist cookies; only sites that I have a known relationship to (e.g., HN, for login) get to set cookies. The overwhelming majority of the web still works
by deathanatos 7y ago
I whitelist cookies; only sites that I have a known relationship to (e.g., HN, for login) get to set cookies.
The overwhelming majority of the web still works just fine. It's trivial to pick out what doesn't, as it either tends to:
a. require cookies for some inane task that doesn't need them, and it tells me this
b. breaks horribly. Typically, JS trying to access LocalStorage, but not checking whether the call was successful or not.
The grandparent is also wrong about,
> Therefore if you do not have cookies from the major ad networks, you're either a brand-new device or an incognito browser.
No, or you're whitelisting all or third-party cookies. (The latter being significantly easier to do, and causes much less breakage. I don't think I've ever seen a third-party cookie cause breakage.)
N.b., I'm not necessarily recommending what I do to others; it takes a lot of work, and I really need better tooling around my flow. But it gives me the context on how cookies/persistence causes or does not cause site breakage.
- pferde 7y agoOr you can just freely allow all cookies from any website that wants to set them (sites will be happy and working), but only for current browser session. You have to remember to restart the browser every now and then, though. Then use whitelist to selectively allow cookies from some "friendly" sites to be stored permanently.
- CaptainZapp 7y agoI clear all browser data upon exit. Overkill? Maybe, but it works for me.
- the_duke 7y agoIf the intent is no tracking, then this defeats the purpose. Often the browser stays open for hours and you'll have identifying tracking cookies very quickly. A great, really underused feature in Firefox is first party cookie isolation: it isolates all cookies set by a site to the same domain, preventing all cross site tracking. Set privacy.firstparty.isolate to true in about:config. Some more info: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/22/how-to-enable-first-party-isolation-in-firefox/ https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/22/how-to-enable-first-party-...
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y agoOr use an extension like Cookie Auto-Delete. It clears all cookies set by a given tab when that tab is closed, and lets you whitelist domains which can set cookies which won't be deleted.
- pferde 7y agoThanks, that's much better than my approach. This is exactly the extension I needed, as it makes cookie management more straightforward and transparent to me. I switched yesterday and couldn't be happier. :)