Not deleting cookies on close as per my preferences
OK, I have my privacy options set as they always have been - to remove cookies not on my exception list at close:
Firefox: "Use custom settings for history" "Accept Cookies from Sites" "Accept Third Party Cookies" Keep Until: "I close firefox"
I have a list of about a dozen sites in "exceptions", all set to "allow".
However, it's not deleting non-allowed cookies. For instance, I can make sure I don't have a "google.com" cookie, go google something, which gives me one, then exit firefox, start it up again, and the google.com cookie is still there. Same goes for various "doubleclick" detritus and other ad tracking cookies.
It was working at one time. It seems to have gotten broken when I installed torbutton, noted that when tor was enabled, it deleted all my cookies, decided that I didn't want to put up with that, and uninstalled the add on. I'll use a separate browser instance if I want the tor proxy. But now the cookie settings aren't working, even though they appear to be set right.
All Replies (5)
i noticed this just a few hours ago. (19 MAY 2010, 5pm)
EXACT issue-- except I have NOTHING in the exceptions, so ALL cookies should be gone if I close FF and re-launch. BUT they are all still there....
I dont use tor anything
since at least 3.6.3 this is a problem. please fix this in 3.6.5. thanks
Bump.
After almost 10 years with Firefox don't make me try Google's browser.
I found the solution. Apparently it's not a bug - it's a feature. Don't you love when that happens?? :(
Sometimes I wonder if some developers spend any time in the real world dealing with real people. We're not all robots, guys. Real people don't just *get* concepts like this.
The post:
This is apparently by design.
Firefox has a feature where you close Firefox and it offers to save all your tabs, and then you restore the browser and those tabs come back. That's called session restore. What I didn't realize is that it'll also restore all the session cookies for those pages too! It treats it like you had never closed the browser.
This makes sense in the sense that if your browser crashed you get right back to where you were, but is a little disconcerting for web devs used to session cookies getting cleared. I've got some old session cookies from months ago that were set by sites I always have open in tabs.
To test this out, close all the tabs in your browser, then close the browser and restart it. I think the session cookies for your site should clear in that case. Otherwise you'd have to turn off session restore.
Check out this Bugzilla bug:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.../show_bug.cgi?id=443354]
Modified by JustinRez
link appears to be https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=443354