Cookies set to "Never" but Safari now accepts all cookies anyway

Just upgraded to Lion and Sfari 5.1.3 and still no banana on the cookie mess Apple has served us. Cookie management is completely random when "Block cookies always" is set.

Ghostery doesn't block cookies, not sure what it does in fact.

Apple has had a year to figure this out, but it is simply not a priority. No money in it for Apple, bottom line for any business.

Recently I updated Adobe Flash Player. Has anyone researched to not save "local storage" cookies this way?

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlayer/LSM/WS6aa5ec234ff3f285139dc56112e3786b68 c-7fff.html#WS6aa5ec234ff3f285139dc56112e3786b68c-7ffb

It is unfortunate (to say the least) that Adobe is choosing to use the term "local storage" for what everybody else calls Flash cookies. The latter term has acquired a very sour smell over the years — a number of advertising companies have been caught regenerating cookies that the user had deleted, via intermediate storage in Flash cookies. Guess I can't blame Adobe for wanting to forget that term, but tough on them. Flash cookies they were and remain.

The term "local storage" is already claimed. It's an HTML5 feature that all the cool ad companies have jumped on to track users, now that cookies are getting too well known.

I block all Flash cookies by forbidding access to the directory Safari wants to store them in.

I delete Safari's directory containing HTML5 Local Storage objects each time I quit the browser, and regenerate it from a saved version that contains only the storage objects that I want.

I've installed 5.1.4 (on 10.6.8) and it has resolved the cookie issue as far as I can see. It only took 9 months...

There is no option to prevent local storage, and resetting safari sometimes (or clearing all site data) often still leaves one site with local storage after relaunching.

Anyway, this is acceptable for me. Safari is very fast now (compared to 5.0).

Thank you Safari developers.

I had this problem last night. I submitted this bug under the SAFRI> Report bugs to Apple menu>

Please resubmit if I didn't report that the correct way.

Error in Safari Privacy Settings Description. I've been trying to figure out why deleted cookies keep populating all night. I've tried everything from resetting safari completely to deleting certain folders. The prompt asks "Block cookies?" and I had tried setting both from third parties and "always" then removing and they keep repopulating even without browsing. in fact, all i needed was to switch tabs on the privacy window and a lot of cookies would be back by the time I switch back. This morning after seeing this page, I tried the "Never"(block cookies) option and the only thing it repopulates is a cookie"apple.com". The problem is with the "always" setting, websites like facebook and google think I'm blocking cookies when it really is allowing everything. Please review your code and iron out this section. Then hire me.

In summary,

Always block cookies> deleted cookies comeback after a couple of seconds> facebook and google think you're blocking cookies and won't allow you in.

Never block cookies > only apple.com repopulates > allows facebook, but added a facebook cookie after i visited the site(didn't try google) (minutes later akamai cookie)

Block cookies from third parties and advertisers > deleted cookies come back after a couple of seconds >allows facebook and google, but not sure if it's blocking or allowing third parties

oh and as soon as you click on a radio button other than never, the cookie list gets full again.

Agemal,

The Safari developers fixed the cookie issue with Safari 5.1.4. Cookies are blocked. The only site data that comes is cache and local storage.

I tested the heck out of it before posting, and nothing has changed since then. Again, I'm using 10.6.8 and Safari 5.1.4. I upgraded from 5.0.x.

FireFox is a better browser, it's the best out there by a mile. The Chrome fanboys make me want to puke. Also, I think, it's important to support another option (as Chrome is just a WebKit browser, and Apple is the key force behind WebKit--so Google just takes what Apple does with WebKit and adds a dumb UI to it). Beyond that, WebKit is the browser base used by nearly every mobile platform, from Android to Windows Mobile--all essentially dependent on Apple for innovation.

The Mozilla team have blown me away, multiple times, with their work on Gecko. These guys are small fries compared to Apple and Google, but they keep surpassing everyone. Very sad, though, is the general public's lack of understanding regarding these issues, and the popularity of Chrome. FireFox had made such great inroads against IE, and then Google essentially rebranded Safari as Chrome, and promoted the heck out of it everywhere, across all their services, and people downloaded it, amazed at how much faster it was than IE.

Google is becoming the new Microsoft, though. They can't innovate, and just buy or rebrand technology (YouTube, Android, Chrome, etc), while employing monopolist practices in their core business--serving ads. The worst part is Google has become the primary gatekeeper of information, and their "filter bubbles" (see Eli Pariser's TED talk) are blocking out relevant information and just serving search results that make them the most money.

Luckily, there is a solution. A site called www.duckduckgo.com (or www.ddg.gg) now provides a fantastic search engine that does not filter your searches, or promote results based on ads, and does not sell your information from searches. Their service provides a secure, encrypted search and blows away the other engines. FireFox has their search option included by default (just click the search icon in FF, and you can set it to duckduck). Hopefully Apple will add this as an option in Safari soon.

As I wrote before, I use FireFox for any site I need cookies for, from online shopping to banking, or this site for that matter. It's the only browser I trust for that, and I have it clear all data upon closing. I use Safari for general browsing, as it's the simplest browser to open a ton of sites at once (with one click, I open all the sites in a genre I want).

Zebra Storm, you can use Glims for Safari and add every search engine you want (including DuckDuckGo).

Thanks McBuffy, I'm aware of that. When you visit duckduck, on the bottom right they list every option to use it depending on what browser you are using. I'd prefer it be added to Safari in the standard mix with bing, yahoo, google, etc., rather than requiring an external hack. Actually, last night when I went to machangout to look at glims, the site was down (but it's up now).

A couple of questions, could the related cookies be coming from the Safari Prefetching thing or from Top Sites loading sites in the background?

Very Interesting.

I don't use "Top Sites" PB1701, so I can't comment on that.

From what I understand, top sites is always on. There is no way to turn it off. The cookies I generally see are the ones that "will" load whenever you open Top Sites (the defaut pages that it has set).