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Total Cookie Protection, built into Firefox, makes sure that facebook.com can’t use cookies to track you across websites. It does this by partitioning data stor

by jefftk 5y ago

Total Cookie Protection, built into Firefox, makes sure that facebook.com can’t use cookies to track you across websites. It does this by partitioning data storage into one cookie jar per website, rather than using one big jar for all of facebook.com’s storage. With Enhanced Cookie Clearing, if you clear site data for comfypants.com, the entire cookie jar is emptied, including any data facebook.com set while embedded in comfypants.com. This seems exactly right: now that we have partitioned cookies, cookie clearing should clear cookies for the whole partition.

jrochkind1 5y ago
Should also make it easier to defeat some paywalls by clearing cookies just for that site.
faichai 5y ago
It’s insane that this hasn’t been the default all along across all browsers. Just shows how Google et al, strive to safeguard and profit from the status quo, at the expense of every internet user.
- jefftk 5y ago
  > It’s insane that this hasn’t been the default all along across all browsers Historically cookies weren't partitioned by site. So if you went to clear the cookies for https://publisher.example https://publisher.example, then the browser wouldn't know whether to also clear cookies for https://other.example https://other.example. (Cookies are still not partitioned by default in Firefox; it requires turning on Total Cookie Protection)
- sp332 5y ago
  This is two huge changes away from how every browser historically stored and cleared cookies, including old Opera, IE, Firefox, Safari, everybody.
- crazygringo 5y ago
  It's ridiculous to suggest that this was somehow all nefariously intended by Google et al. How do you then explain that's what Firefox has done all the way up until now? No -- it's just how cookies were meant to work from the start, the most obvious implementation before the privacy/security/tracking implications got worked out, which has taken many years. And Google's working to make similar improvements to Chrome: https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-path-towards.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-... So not "insane" at all. To the contrary, it was entirely reasonable at the beginning, and now we see browsers reasonably addressing the problems that have arisen.
  - SilasX 5y ago
    Couldn't a smart person have figured out exactly how that cookie model could be abused like, within days of it existing? Was it really something that only got figured out with time?
    - ElderKorihor 5y ago
      You have hindsight. In the early days, the internet was seen as a massively playfield-leveling and decentralizing force ("the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"), not a massively centralizing one (Facebook is the world's only newspaper). In a model where everything is decentralized and leveled , no player is big enough to worry about.
      - joe_the_user 5y ago
        Sure, the realization might taken a decade but the change took two decades at least. So it seems a little late.
      - tuatoru 5y ago
        A smart person could have figured it out, but it was extremely unlikely. The economics sub-discipline of economic geography was being developed at about the same time as Eternal September. The key insight (one of the key insights) from that research is that as the absolute cost of transport goes down, previously insignificant differences in cost become important. This leads to to the development of "hubs" - centralization. (Here we're talking about information transport, and the cost being time per bit.) But as you say, at the time the tech world could never have believed that centralization was the default expectation, nor designed things to compensate.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  The world kept turning all these years before people got unreasonably paranoid about cookies and ad networks. I think it's all pointless theater. I wish Mozilla would focus more on browser customizability and other extension powers like we used to have with XUL and bringing the mobile browser up to speed instead. I couldn't care less about a Facebook tracking cookie.
  - amenod 5y ago
    I agree with the mobile browser (the only recent change they made, afaics, was to artificially disable most of the extensions and to make tab switching worse), however it is not just about ad networks that people are paranoid about. Tracking is pervasive and there are many players which know way too much about what users are doing on the net. I don't even care if they track me - what I care about is that they track mostly everybody. Such power should not be underestimated.
    - jimmaswell 5y ago
      Law enforcement is exempt from GDPR and other online privacy acts and we all know how much intelligence agencies know. The people who it matters if they track you are still tracking you. All that changed is it's harder to make money from ads and it's more expensive and dangerous to run your own web service.
      - mnot 5y ago
        Not true; a substantial part of the Schrems II decision was about how the GDPR applies not only to law enforcement, but also national security surveillance. See eg ‘European Essential Guarantees.’
- SilasX 5y ago
  As others noted, I'm not sure there's a profit motive to blame here, but yeah it feels like browsers are constantly playing catch-up, indicated by ever-stronger words for the features, rather than switch to a better-engineered, more robust model -- reminds me of PHP's treadmill of "no-really-totes-secure-this-time-sql-call".
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  What if there were browsers and protocols written by users instead of companies set up to exploit users.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  It isn't insane, it's a leftover from when you didn't have to assume that most sites you use are actively hostile to you. If it didn't come with all the tracking and privacy implications, being able to see your friends' comments on a site first, use social widgets etc. is a feature. This will also break some sites, some of which will never get fixed, so this is a hard change to make (but necessary at this point).
xorcist 5y ago
This sounds like cookies should have worked from the start. I suspect this is going to help against some CSRF as well?
- jefftk 5y ago
  How would this help with CSRF? The new feature only applies when someone intentionally clears their cookies.
  - Terretta 5y ago
    Not how I read it. To me it says Facebook.com cookies set through site A are separate from those stored through site B. Even if you never clear, fb cookies would no longer be a single cookie to link these, but separate. The jar is the key new thing, not the emptying.
    - jefftk 5y ago
      The approach to the cookie jar isn't new in Firefox 91; that's Total Cookie Protection, added in Firefox 86: https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/02/23/total-cookie-protection/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/02/23/total-cookie-pr...
      - Terretta 5y ago
        Delete the word “new”, emphasis on “key”.

by jefftk 5y ago

jrochkind1 5y ago

Should also make it easier to defeat some paywalls by clearing cookies just for that site.

faichai 5y ago

It’s insane that this hasn’t been the default all along across all browsers. Just shows how Google et al, strive to safeguard and profit from the status quo, at the expense of every internet user.

jefftk 5y ago
> It’s insane that this hasn’t been the default all along across all browsers Historically cookies weren't partitioned by site. So if you went to clear the cookies for https://publisher.example https://publisher.example, then the browser wouldn't know whether to also clear cookies for https://other.example https://other.example. (Cookies are still not partitioned by default in Firefox; it requires turning on Total Cookie Protection)
sp332 5y ago
This is two huge changes away from how every browser historically stored and cleared cookies, including old Opera, IE, Firefox, Safari, everybody.
crazygringo 5y ago
It's ridiculous to suggest that this was somehow all nefariously intended by Google et al. How do you then explain that's what Firefox has done all the way up until now? No -- it's just how cookies were meant to work from the start, the most obvious implementation before the privacy/security/tracking implications got worked out, which has taken many years. And Google's working to make similar improvements to Chrome: https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-path-towards.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-... So not "insane" at all. To the contrary, it was entirely reasonable at the beginning, and now we see browsers reasonably addressing the problems that have arisen.
- SilasX 5y ago
  Couldn't a smart person have figured out exactly how that cookie model could be abused like, within days of it existing? Was it really something that only got figured out with time?
  - ElderKorihor 5y ago
    You have hindsight. In the early days, the internet was seen as a massively playfield-leveling and decentralizing force ("the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"), not a massively centralizing one (Facebook is the world's only newspaper). In a model where everything is decentralized and leveled , no player is big enough to worry about.
    - joe_the_user 5y ago
      Sure, the realization might taken a decade but the change took two decades at least. So it seems a little late.
    - tuatoru 5y ago
      A smart person could have figured it out, but it was extremely unlikely. The economics sub-discipline of economic geography was being developed at about the same time as Eternal September. The key insight (one of the key insights) from that research is that as the absolute cost of transport goes down, previously insignificant differences in cost become important. This leads to to the development of "hubs" - centralization. (Here we're talking about information transport, and the cost being time per bit.) But as you say, at the time the tech world could never have believed that centralization was the default expectation, nor designed things to compensate.
jimmaswell 5y ago
The world kept turning all these years before people got unreasonably paranoid about cookies and ad networks. I think it's all pointless theater. I wish Mozilla would focus more on browser customizability and other extension powers like we used to have with XUL and bringing the mobile browser up to speed instead. I couldn't care less about a Facebook tracking cookie.
- amenod 5y ago
  I agree with the mobile browser (the only recent change they made, afaics, was to artificially disable most of the extensions and to make tab switching worse), however it is not just about ad networks that people are paranoid about. Tracking is pervasive and there are many players which know way too much about what users are doing on the net. I don't even care if they track me - what I care about is that they track mostly everybody. Such power should not be underestimated.
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    Law enforcement is exempt from GDPR and other online privacy acts and we all know how much intelligence agencies know. The people who it matters if they track you are still tracking you. All that changed is it's harder to make money from ads and it's more expensive and dangerous to run your own web service.
    - mnot 5y ago
      Not true; a substantial part of the Schrems II decision was about how the GDPR applies not only to law enforcement, but also national security surveillance. See eg ‘European Essential Guarantees.’
SilasX 5y ago
As others noted, I'm not sure there's a profit motive to blame here, but yeah it feels like browsers are constantly playing catch-up, indicated by ever-stronger words for the features, rather than switch to a better-engineered, more robust model -- reminds me of PHP's treadmill of "no-really-totes-secure-this-time-sql-call".
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
What if there were browsers and protocols written by users instead of companies set up to exploit users.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
It isn't insane, it's a leftover from when you didn't have to assume that most sites you use are actively hostile to you. If it didn't come with all the tracking and privacy implications, being able to see your friends' comments on a site first, use social widgets etc. is a feature. This will also break some sites, some of which will never get fixed, so this is a hard change to make (but necessary at this point).

xorcist 5y ago

This sounds like cookies should have worked from the start. I suspect this is going to help against some CSRF as well?

jefftk 5y ago
How would this help with CSRF? The new feature only applies when someone intentionally clears their cookies.
- Terretta 5y ago
  Not how I read it. To me it says Facebook.com cookies set through site A are separate from those stored through site B. Even if you never clear, fb cookies would no longer be a single cookie to link these, but separate. The jar is the key new thing, not the emptying.
  - jefftk 5y ago
    The approach to the cookie jar isn't new in Firefox 91; that's Total Cookie Protection, added in Firefox 86: https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/02/23/total-cookie-protection/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/02/23/total-cookie-pr...
    - Terretta 5y ago
      Delete the word “new”, emphasis on “key”.