Make it easier to manage cookies... PLEASE!

[Wayne]

Privacy is supposed to be the hallmark of Firefox, the reason why we are supposed to love it so much.  Yet the means by which one can manage cookies necessitates IT knowledge that we casual users do not have.  Please make it easy for one to manage cookies-- keeping those for sites one trusts and uses (e.g. banking), and deleting those for sites that one casually visit.  It feels as though this was given initial priority and implemented so the "box can be checked", then quickly forgotten. 

[jscher2000]

> Please make it easy for one to manage cookies-- keeping those for sites one trusts and uses (e.g. banking), and deleting those for sites that one casually visit.

You probably are familiar with the "Manage Data" button in the "Cookies and Site Data" section of the Settings/Preferences page. This lists the sites that have stored cookies and cookie-like data in Firefox and allows removing one or more sites' data. Is this the interface you use now, or something else?

"Manage Data" does not have a feature to hide your trusted sites (would be nice) or add/remove trusted sites (that's done in the separate "Manage Exceptions" dialog). Integration definitely could be better, but it would be helpful if you describe in more detail what you have in mind.

[Patrick]

The problem with "Manage Exceptions" in present cookie management (97.0.2), is that if you do not check the box to delete all cookies, and go into Manage Exceptions instead, then you have to say which cookies to want to keep (which is okay, there is likely a very limited amount of cookies you want to keep), but then you also have to say which cookies to delete (this is not okay, as there is no end of cookies you do not want to keep that you get through casual browsing, as Wayne referred to above ). You should be able to simply check "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed", and then click "Manage Exceptions" as well, and indicate only those cookies and site data you wish to keep, and delete everything else. You should not have to name all cookies you do not wish to keep.  But, presently, when you click to "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" it deletes all cookies, and does not use exceptions.

[Segami]

Why can we not have a cookie vault, somewhere to store cookies we want to keep, or am I missing something? At the moment I either have the option to delete all cookies, or I have to go through and delte cookies one by one or in groups while having to keep a look out for the cookies I want to keep so as not to have to go through logging back into websites again.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Segami]

I totally agree, I started a thread before reading this:

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/cookie-vault/idi-p/3578

[Christian75]

While waiting for a possible improvement of the cookie management by Firefox, which is indeed minimal, I use the Cookie Quick Manager extension.
It allows not only to protect the cookies of certain sites but, if one wants, to act more finely.
It provides a lot of detailed information.

As I have not taken the time to study it in depth, I do not understand everything. But you can use it simply like this:
1) Protect the cookies of a site by using the right button on its address (there are often at least two variants with and without "www.").
2) Then use the bin at the bottom left to delete the rest.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[Segami]

Cheers Christian75,

I will look into that, although it seems odd that we need an extension to handle this.

[Witty]

I'm with you Segami. I have always longed for a checkbox to keep the cookies that I would like to make perpetual, then be able to toss all the other cookies that have accumulated during normal browsing in one fell swoop. For security, I would be very hesitant to install a third party app to manage, or even look at my cookies.

[brmath]

There are sites that will not load if there are too many cookies.  I don't know why, but that is a fact.  When I go to remove the excess cookies, there are hundreds of them.  But I can't just click delete all cookies, because then I lose the 5 cookies I need.  If there is a way to accept cookies just from designated sites and REJECT all the others, I have not found it.  But that is what we need.  I really don't need a zillion cookies from sites I never heard of and never visited.  It is a total mess.  Please do something about this.

[mconca]

@brmathyou are right, online cookies are a bit of a mess.

We are busy testing Total Cookie Protection. This will isolate all cookies into their own private storage, which won't prevent them from being loaded, but will prevent them from being read by any site but their own. You'll still see hundreds of cookies--such is the state of the web these days--but it may improve your situation.  Look for Total Cookie Protection to roll out very soon.

In the meantime, if you want to take matters into your own hands, Firefox has tools you can use to manage this yourself.  I'll be frank, though, this could be a fair amount of work, depending on the number of sites you visit. And getting everything just right, and keeping it that way so sites you care about don't break, may take some trial and error. 

First, go into Settings, Privacy & Security.  In the Enhanced Tracking Protection section, select Custom, then in the dropdown next to Cookies, select All Cookies.  This will, as stated, block all cookies.

Now, scroll down to Cookies and Site Data on that page, click on Manage Exceptions, and start adding the domains that you want to accept cookies from.

Like I said, this could be a lot of work, and it might be difficult to know exactly which domains to enable in order to keep a site working.

In the meantime, we'll keep working to make this kind of do-it-yourself cookie management unnecessary in Firefox.

[Patjos]

Can you please explain more what total cookie protection means, does this mean that we have to still go in and block cookies somehow.  Like what does this mean if I say 'accept all', and what happens if i say ' necessary cookies only' 

Thanks, I think it would be useful if you added an explanation to the information below.

Web Platform

• Your information now has increased protection from online tracking via Total Cookie Protection enabled by default. All third-party cookies are now isolated into partitioned storage.

[Anonymous]

I’m so very tired of having to double-click “Last Used” in the Cookies management window. How about sorting cookies from Most Recently Used as default instead of by Storage size? How about combining the Manage Data and Manage Exceptions windows into a single easy-to-manage window? Why is the Manage Exceptions such a tiny, tiny window when I have long, long lists to manage? I’m still trying to understand why cookies from websites I have NEVER visited (like krxd.net) get stuffed onto my computer from a website where I do allow its cookies (like cbs.com) when the setting should block cookies from unvisited websites???

[Longwing70]

I’m so very tired of having to double-click “Last Used” in the Cookies management window. How about sorting cookies from Most Recently Used as default instead of by Storage size? How about combining the Manage Data and Manage Exceptions windows into a single easy-to-manage window? Why is the Manage Exceptions such a tiny, tiny window when I have long, long lists to manage? I’m still trying to understand why cookies from websites I have NEVER visited (like krxd.net) get stuffed onto my computer from a website where I do allow its cookies (like cbs.com) when the setting should block cookies from unvisited websites???

[middings]

Hamburger > Settings > Privacy & Security > Manage Data [button] > (select web sites) > Remove Selected [button]

The "Removing Cookies and Site Data" should allow the user to unselect web sites on the list. At present a user who has selected a large number of web sites for cookie and site data removal but chose one site by mistake must choose Cancel then re-construct the entire list of sites for cookies and site data removal. This is user-hostile behavior. I'm surprised this wasn't fixed years ago.

[ean365]

I was going to open my own feature request for this, but did the search first, and I couldn't agree more on this.  It has bothered me for a long, long time...

I absolutely DO want to "delete all cookies when I close Firefox"  --- EXCEPT --- I absolutely DO NOT want to delete any cookies that are in my "exceptions".   It is non-intuitive, and quite strange to me that cookies and sites that are marked as "exceptions" are deleted nonetheless when I close Firefox.  So, I can't create exceptions to be safe and secure and at the same time delete cookies and history after casual browsing when I close the browser?  I hope total cookie control is released soon and that it does at least "fix" this.

Thanks for all the serious work you do!