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> By the way, before anyone runs off and yells "Switch to Safari" or something like that, keep in mind that Safari is actually in a worse state and doesn't have

> By the way, before anyone runs off and yells "Switch to Safari" or something like that, keep in mind that Safari is actually in a worse state and doesn't have detailed cookie and site information at all. It does, but it's split between two places. You can see a list of all sites that have stored data in Preferences > Privacy > Manage Website Data... (no option to view here, just delete). You can also navigate to the site in the browser and then view the detailed data: - Check "Show Develop menu in menu bar" in Preferences > Advanced - Develop > Show Web Inspector - Navigate to the Storage tab On the left you'll see options for Cookies, Local Storage & Session Storage.

Kiro 5y ago
Same for Chrome so not sure what this article is about.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  The article is quite clear. The question is, why did they go backwards on functionality. They took a simple user interface and removed a single useful feature from it, and what remains is a much more tedious way to do the same thing. Why? What was the benefit? The author speculates that it's to make user cookie control more difficult.
  - shock-value 5y ago
    The reason was probably that no one ever needs to delete just a subset of cookies from a site. I certainly never have, and I'm a pretty technically-minded user. (Other than for development, in which case I'm using dev tools anyway.)
    - IIsi50MHz 5y ago
      Counterpoint: I've many times had to fix presentation of or access to a site by purging just specific cookies. Two sites that have previously had these problems are RingCentral's web interface and AutoTask. Maybe a dozen or more others, but admittedly not many…however, when I've needed it, the problem has been persistent, requiring multiple fixes per day, over a few consecutive days or or even a couple weeks.
      - SquareWheel 5y ago
        Needing to delete specific cookies does arise occasionally, and we have dev tools or the cookie viewer under the lock for that. However, needing to delete those cookies without first viewing the page due to side effects - that is a very niche use case.
        xemdetia 5y ago
        Is it? I feel like most of my atrocious cookie hand fix cases end up being broken redirects where you get redirected to some new url that errors, so loading the page doesn't help to get rid of the offending cookie.
        SquareWheel 5y ago
        That would be an atrocious bit of engineering from the developer. But I suspect that even in that case, holding Escape as you load the page would kill the redirect.
        TheGoddessInari 5y ago
        Not who you were responding to, but I've had that happen on Microsoft flows. Manually interrupting most flows is practically impossible. Too fast, and can chain across a half dozen (sub)domains near instantly. The web hasn't been that slow or simple in a long time.
        happymellon 5y ago
        > I've had that happen on Microsoft flows. Yes, as mentioned, from atrocious engineering. See also that Windows can break the desktop due to their own advert.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      The feature was already created. What could be the harm of keeping it?
  - jhoechtl 5y ago
    I think they prepare for cookieless in favor of FLoC.
gsich 5y ago
Why Safari? The only sane choice is Firefox.
- kortex 5y ago
  Or Brave. Safari gives me too many issues. Brave has all the compatibility you'd expect from chromium.
  - gsich 5y ago
    If Brave is keeping Chromium updated, then it is possible that this will effect them also.
  - techrat 5y ago
    Brave is just a shitcoin mining, referral link hijacking reskin of Chrome.
    - brnt 5y ago
      By default it doesnt, and although I'd certainly advise going over all Brave's settings once, then you have the safest (as in not outdated like some other privacy forks) and privacy respecting Chrome based browser around.
      - techrat 5y ago
        Stop drinking the kool aid, buh. If you have to go over the settings... A safe, privacy respecting browser wouldn't resort to any shady tactics in the first place.
        brnt 5y ago
        I'm not drinking any koolaid, I just have not found anything better, apart from Firefox.
        nyolfen 5y ago
        brave's default settings are almost certainly exactly what a privacy-oriented person would choose. it does not mine crypto, and it only pays you in crypto to view notification ads if you opt-in. i even gave the ads a shot but decided it wasn't worth the $2 a month or whatever, so now i just have a maintained, de-googled chrome, which is basically a description of the optimal browser in 2021. does firefox ask you if you want to install pocket yet?
officeplant 5y ago
From the blog it sounds like Chrome's will be in a similar state after the update. Just another thing I'll have to navigate to in a tedious manner.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Use Firefox?
  - Datagenerator 5y ago
    I'm into watching telemetry data using tools like Pihole, Wireshark, DNSLookupView. Firefox is the only browser which does not invoke spontaneous connections and gives the user the Freedom to inspect and clear the cookie data. Google notoriously creates VPN tunnels to hide what it is sending and receiving. Your browser preference might determine many people's privacy if the narrative is limited to not so important things to me like speed and ease of use.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      > Google notoriously creates VPN tunnels to hide what it is sending and receiving. I’ve never heard about this, could you provide a source?
      - Datagenerator 5y ago
        The due diligence starts with research on the topic 1e100.net for example https://superuser.com/questions/75841/what-is-1e100-net-and-why-do-i-have-tcp-ports-open-to-it#75847 https://superuser.com/questions/75841/what-is-1e100-net-and-...
        notafraudster 5y ago
        No comments I can see there seem to address VPNs; one notes that if you DNS block one of their domains, they connect via IP. But there's no discussion of VPN tunnels. I made sure to view all comments. Do you think you could forward a link that makes that claim? Unless you just mean that sending data over plain HTTP to these servers is in some sense a VPN tunnel because the resulting servers could forward it elsewhere?
xqyf 5y ago
Sure, both browsers have developer tools. This is much more opaque than a Settings menu.
samizdis 5y ago
> You can also navigate to the site in the browser and then view the detailed data The author addresses this point (or has now addressed it) in the addendum to point out an "observer effect" shortcoming: This information can be seen with the web inspector in both Chrome and Safari. Yes, but the crucial difference is that you have to navigate to an individual site in a browser window in order to see the site data in the web inspector. Whereas in the Preferences, you can get to the site data, for every website, without having to load the sites. And remember, the very act of loading a site can make the site data change, so there's an "observer effect" if you try to examine or delete it in the web inspector.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Not that I think this has actually been applied by anyone in the wild, but it'd be fun to make a site that take advantage of this You can detect developer tools being open in Chrome pretty reliably, so detect dev tools have been open then "clean up your act" before there's a chance to view anything of note
  - codezero 5y ago
    Could you see the original cookie by inspecting the headers of the network request? This would presumably be the value before the page loads and gives access to document.cookie or a change triggered by a server-side header.
    - sk5t 5y ago
      Consider using something like https://mitmproxy.org/ https://mitmproxy.org/ to deal with a site so devious as to detect browser-level tools being used to inspect headers/cookies/etc.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    This has absolutely been used "in the wild". One particularly nasty strain of ad-block-evasion scripts would detect the developer tools being opened, and would reload the page and disable most of its features to prevent them from being analyzed.
a3n 5y ago
What a weird design. Listing and viewing would often be done when you want to "clean things up, but not everything. Disclosure: never used or saw safari, and i don't have a mac, nor the mac nature.
- kiliancs 5y ago
  What is the mac nature?
  - gopher_space 5y ago
    It's either an internally consistent UX or matching belt and shoes, depending on who you ask.
    - PostThisTooFast 5y ago
      Or cafe-oriented hipster douchebaggery, depending on whom you ask.
ashtonkem 5y ago
Safari is also generally trending in the right way, while Chrome is headed in the wrong way.
- Bellamy 5y ago
  Why so?
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Apple doesn’t make money from ads (yet), so there is no harm and a lot of marketing benefit in pushing privacy from ad trackers. Google is an ad company, so good privacy controls in Chrome hurts them.
    - FractalHQ 5y ago
      Safari privacy is a joke until I can install UBlock Origin on MacOS and iOS Safari. Until they support proper browser extensions outside of their App Store, Safari will remain a privacy leaking toy compared to chromium and gecko browsers. Also the amount of bugs and missing features I face in Safari as a web developer is a nightmare. Cute animations though.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        I’d argue that Apple’s incentives are mostly aligned for privacy on Safari, but the incentives for it to spend its resources on Safari in general are not aligned. Apple has long had a native-app only outlook which has hampered its work on browsers for a long time.
    - ksec 5y ago
      >Apple doesn’t make money from ads (yet) Apple doesn’t make money from web ads (yet). Although even that is changing as Apple now offer personalised Ads in Apps, they might one day offer that on the web as well.
nomoreplease 5y ago
Use Firefox?

Kiro 5y ago

Same for Chrome so not sure what this article is about.

DangitBobby 5y ago
The article is quite clear. The question is, why did they go backwards on functionality. They took a simple user interface and removed a single useful feature from it, and what remains is a much more tedious way to do the same thing. Why? What was the benefit? The author speculates that it's to make user cookie control more difficult.
- shock-value 5y ago
  The reason was probably that no one ever needs to delete just a subset of cookies from a site. I certainly never have, and I'm a pretty technically-minded user. (Other than for development, in which case I'm using dev tools anyway.)
  - IIsi50MHz 5y ago
    Counterpoint: I've many times had to fix presentation of or access to a site by purging just specific cookies. Two sites that have previously had these problems are RingCentral's web interface and AutoTask. Maybe a dozen or more others, but admittedly not many…however, when I've needed it, the problem has been persistent, requiring multiple fixes per day, over a few consecutive days or or even a couple weeks.
    - SquareWheel 5y ago
      Needing to delete specific cookies does arise occasionally, and we have dev tools or the cookie viewer under the lock for that. However, needing to delete those cookies without first viewing the page due to side effects - that is a very niche use case.
      - xemdetia 5y ago
        Is it? I feel like most of my atrocious cookie hand fix cases end up being broken redirects where you get redirected to some new url that errors, so loading the page doesn't help to get rid of the offending cookie.
        SquareWheel 5y ago
        That would be an atrocious bit of engineering from the developer. But I suspect that even in that case, holding Escape as you load the page would kill the redirect.
        TheGoddessInari 5y ago
        Not who you were responding to, but I've had that happen on Microsoft flows. Manually interrupting most flows is practically impossible. Too fast, and can chain across a half dozen (sub)domains near instantly. The web hasn't been that slow or simple in a long time.
        happymellon 5y ago
        > I've had that happen on Microsoft flows. Yes, as mentioned, from atrocious engineering. See also that Windows can break the desktop due to their own advert.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    The feature was already created. What could be the harm of keeping it?
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  I think they prepare for cookieless in favor of FLoC.

gsich 5y ago

Why Safari? The only sane choice is Firefox.

kortex 5y ago
Or Brave. Safari gives me too many issues. Brave has all the compatibility you'd expect from chromium.
- gsich 5y ago
  If Brave is keeping Chromium updated, then it is possible that this will effect them also.
- techrat 5y ago
  Brave is just a shitcoin mining, referral link hijacking reskin of Chrome.
  - brnt 5y ago
    By default it doesnt, and although I'd certainly advise going over all Brave's settings once, then you have the safest (as in not outdated like some other privacy forks) and privacy respecting Chrome based browser around.
    - techrat 5y ago
      Stop drinking the kool aid, buh. If you have to go over the settings... A safe, privacy respecting browser wouldn't resort to any shady tactics in the first place.
      - brnt 5y ago
        I'm not drinking any koolaid, I just have not found anything better, apart from Firefox.
      - nyolfen 5y ago
        brave's default settings are almost certainly exactly what a privacy-oriented person would choose. it does not mine crypto, and it only pays you in crypto to view notification ads if you opt-in. i even gave the ads a shot but decided it wasn't worth the $2 a month or whatever, so now i just have a maintained, de-googled chrome, which is basically a description of the optimal browser in 2021. does firefox ask you if you want to install pocket yet?

officeplant 5y ago

From the blog it sounds like Chrome's will be in a similar state after the update. Just another thing I'll have to navigate to in a tedious manner.

fartcannon 5y ago
Use Firefox?
- Datagenerator 5y ago
  I'm into watching telemetry data using tools like Pihole, Wireshark, DNSLookupView. Firefox is the only browser which does not invoke spontaneous connections and gives the user the Freedom to inspect and clear the cookie data. Google notoriously creates VPN tunnels to hide what it is sending and receiving. Your browser preference might determine many people's privacy if the narrative is limited to not so important things to me like speed and ease of use.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    > Google notoriously creates VPN tunnels to hide what it is sending and receiving. I’ve never heard about this, could you provide a source?
    - Datagenerator 5y ago
      The due diligence starts with research on the topic 1e100.net for example https://superuser.com/questions/75841/what-is-1e100-net-and-why-do-i-have-tcp-ports-open-to-it#75847 https://superuser.com/questions/75841/what-is-1e100-net-and-...
      - notafraudster 5y ago
        No comments I can see there seem to address VPNs; one notes that if you DNS block one of their domains, they connect via IP. But there's no discussion of VPN tunnels. I made sure to view all comments. Do you think you could forward a link that makes that claim? Unless you just mean that sending data over plain HTTP to these servers is in some sense a VPN tunnel because the resulting servers could forward it elsewhere?

xqyf 5y ago

Sure, both browsers have developer tools. This is much more opaque than a Settings menu.

samizdis 5y ago

> You can also navigate to the site in the browser and then view the detailed data The author addresses this point (or has now addressed it) in the addendum to point out an "observer effect" shortcoming: This information can be seen with the web inspector in both Chrome and Safari. Yes, but the crucial difference is that you have to navigate to an individual site in a browser window in order to see the site data in the web inspector. Whereas in the Preferences, you can get to the site data, for every website, without having to load the sites. And remember, the very act of loading a site can make the site data change, so there's an "observer effect" if you try to examine or delete it in the web inspector.

BoorishBears 5y ago
Not that I think this has actually been applied by anyone in the wild, but it'd be fun to make a site that take advantage of this You can detect developer tools being open in Chrome pretty reliably, so detect dev tools have been open then "clean up your act" before there's a chance to view anything of note
- codezero 5y ago
  Could you see the original cookie by inspecting the headers of the network request? This would presumably be the value before the page loads and gives access to document.cookie or a change triggered by a server-side header.
  - sk5t 5y ago
    Consider using something like https://mitmproxy.org/ https://mitmproxy.org/ to deal with a site so devious as to detect browser-level tools being used to inspect headers/cookies/etc.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  This has absolutely been used "in the wild". One particularly nasty strain of ad-block-evasion scripts would detect the developer tools being opened, and would reload the page and disable most of its features to prevent them from being analyzed.

a3n 5y ago

What a weird design. Listing and viewing would often be done when you want to "clean things up, but not everything. Disclosure: never used or saw safari, and i don't have a mac, nor the mac nature.

kiliancs 5y ago
What is the mac nature?
- gopher_space 5y ago
  It's either an internally consistent UX or matching belt and shoes, depending on who you ask.
  - PostThisTooFast 5y ago
    Or cafe-oriented hipster douchebaggery, depending on whom you ask.

ashtonkem 5y ago

Safari is also generally trending in the right way, while Chrome is headed in the wrong way.

Bellamy 5y ago
Why so?
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Apple doesn’t make money from ads (yet), so there is no harm and a lot of marketing benefit in pushing privacy from ad trackers. Google is an ad company, so good privacy controls in Chrome hurts them.
  - FractalHQ 5y ago
    Safari privacy is a joke until I can install UBlock Origin on MacOS and iOS Safari. Until they support proper browser extensions outside of their App Store, Safari will remain a privacy leaking toy compared to chromium and gecko browsers. Also the amount of bugs and missing features I face in Safari as a web developer is a nightmare. Cute animations though.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      I’d argue that Apple’s incentives are mostly aligned for privacy on Safari, but the incentives for it to spend its resources on Safari in general are not aligned. Apple has long had a native-app only outlook which has hampered its work on browsers for a long time.
  - ksec 5y ago
    >Apple doesn’t make money from ads (yet) Apple doesn’t make money from web ads (yet). Although even that is changing as Apple now offer personalised Ads in Apps, they might one day offer that on the web as well.

nomoreplease 5y ago

Use Firefox?