how do I block selected tracking cookies from attaching to Safari?

Question

how do I block selected tracking cookies from attaching to Safari?

I treasure my privacy and want to block cookies from Safari ver 5.1.1 before they are loaded. I have used the built in Safari tools that block cookies completely, which means that many web sites will not load properly, and I would like to have the ability to "white list" the specific cookies which I decide are useful and also to allow for the preservation of my login credentials etc. I also want to "black list" tracking cookies so that they never attach to my browser which should be illegal, but around which an entire industry preys on the internet user.

I deeply resent sites that place tracking cookies on my browser to sell information to third parties without my permission or consent. These are almost always advertising cookies or cookies to provide advertisers with my browsing history. Many of these same sites that allow these cookies (likely sell me to the thirde parties!) have cookies that provide useful services or allow useful functionality. Blocking or Allowing an entire web site's cookies is too broad a brush to eliminate the desirable cookies from the privacy stealing ones.

There are several applications that will remove cookies after they occurr, but I cannot find one that will block selected tracking cookies form my browser while allowing me to enable the cookies that are useful. Gostery blocks some cookies, but many get through. These applications seem scarcely more useful than the crude tool provided by Safari in the configuration settings that allows the user to block all cookies, enable all cookies, or allow cookies from web sites that I visit.

A good example might be the CNN.COM web site which tires to appliy six tracking cookies for various commercial entities, but leaves such invading and betraying sites as "sellpoint.net", "Scorecardresearch.com", "revsci.net", "edgekey.net","addthis.com" among over thirty others which were placed on my browser in spite of using Ghostery and setting my Safari 5.1.1 privacy settings within Safari to Block "cookies from third parties and advertisers". The cynical side of me wonders whether Apple is financially benefitting from this ongoing privacy compromise.

Has anyone found an application that will protect my privacy?

Must I use firefox or some other browser to preserve privacy?

Any help appreciated....

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 17" Late 2011 2.5Ghz I7, 8Gb Ram,

Posted on Nov 25, 2011 12:30 PM

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Answer 1

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

Nov 25, 2011 12:36 PM in response to William Mcclatchey1

As you have discovered, many websites won't load without their cookies, this is the policy of the website owners, not the manufacturers of operating systems (be it Microsoft or Apple):

You can compromise with:

But that will not stop all of the ones that offend you.

Firefox allows you to block and create exceptions, maybe you should use that.

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Answer 2

Nov 25, 2011 5:52 PM in response to Klaus1

Thank you for your reply.

Ghostery has been installed for some time, and indeed many of the cookies are prevented from installation. But not anywhere near all of them. I have had twenty ad following cookies installed on top of Ghostery.

This seems like such a corrupted system and process, but maybe there is some hope in being able to white list and black list Ghostery with individual tracking cookies. But I haven't determined how to do this effectively.

Seems like common sense and decency would dictate that privacy would be the default experience on these common internet sites.

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Answer 3

Nov 26, 2011 9:07 AM in response to William Mcclatchey1

I agree with you 100%. I value privacy as part of my private property. I've been fighting a losing battle with cookies on every browser, ranging from Safari to Sea Monkey. On Safari I've found that the best approach is to allow cookies from the originating server, get myself established on each site, then lock out cookies and delete the ones I don't want. Unfortunately with the latest version of Safari, cookie handling has been completely changed. I don't want to say its been overhauled, more like underhauled. The Safari team used to have a very good list view for examing cookies, but with the 5.0 version they've lumped cache in with cookies and something called "Local Storage", which I gather must be related to things like the Flash Player. The cookie window is no longer a click and drag window so I can only look at a few items at a time. There is no way to block certain sites - Google being the worst one - from establishing cache on Safari, even when specifically blocked using Safari extensions AND locked out using the Hosts file. Many times I've watched as the window repopulated with cookies I had just deleted. Strangely, though Safari has no problem restoring cookies that I don't want, it just can't seem to keep me logged in to the many forums I browse daily.

I switched to Firefox but I could never get used to how the cursor/pointer keyboard shortcuts didn't work as elegantly as in Safari. I then went to Sea Monkey and I was really pleased with the level of cookie control there, but its an ugly browser, still in its infancy, and it is missing a few features that the mature browsers like Safari and Firefox have. I just started experimenting with Opera, which is sleek but is very slow to load some pages and has problems with Flash video.

Overall, I keep coming back to Safari because I'm so comfortable with it but it definitely needs a cookie manager overhaul. I don't understand why we can't have cookie control at the user level, not the application level. We should have empirical control regardless of the browser featureset. We should be able to block cookies, cache, local storage, and calls to 3rd party ad sites without going through extensions. The same goes for bookmarks. Most browsers contain bookmarks in a .html file so why not administer them at the user level?

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Answer 4

Nov 26, 2011 9:36 AM in response to Chuck Gray

Thank you for your kind reply, and it is encouraging to realize I am not the only one who resents this systematic privacy invasion in the name of commercialization.

I have gone through a similar journey on browsers, and now find myself using Opera the most. It provides the best toolbox I have encountered from any of the commonly used browsers, and lets you allow/reject cookies at each web site as they attempt to latch on to your machine. It also also allows complete blocking by web site.

So now I find that I use Opera for browsing, and Firefox when I expect to download or interact with a web site such as purchases. Its privacy features with Ghostery installed allow far better control than Safari, and allow the complete deletion of cookies on closing the browser. But it does not offer the granularity of Opera in terms of rejecting cookies as the try to enter your machine.

I find it sad that Apple seems to have lost its ethical way in the current versions of Safari. I used Safari exclusively for several years, but the current version is the least secure, least private of any of the commonly used browsers, and lacks any effective tools for cookie management. I would have thought that a company which has previously honored its customers' privacy and security as a corporate principal, has so abandoned that stance for the past year or more. My cynical suspicion is that they profit from this obvious ommission by selling advertising cookies, but I have no data to support or reject that notion, other than the observation that this would not be a difficult function to integrate in to its browser, and it must be a coroporate decision to avoid a cookie management system in Safari.

Would be interested in any further experience....

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Answer 5

Dec 2, 2011 10:31 AM in response to William Mcclatchey1

William,

I finally had it with all of the weirdness from the various browsers and decided to do everything I could to set Safari up to do the job.

1. I exported my bookmarks.html file to the Desktop and then deleted Safari, and every possible piece of it that I could find on my system.

2. I reinstalled using the version available that day, which I think was 5.1.1.

3. I installed the following extensions:

AdBlock (for obvious reasons)

Ghostery (blocks lots of cookies prior to them getting to Safari, and also gives me a roster of whats been blocked)

Shellfish (blocks all the "social BS" links on every site. Just because.)

I also installed Ultimate Status Bar, to reveal what a link might click through to, and also ExifExt, which reveals Exif data in photos. A valuable tool to demonstrate to people how their "private" photos reveal a lot of data that they didn't know existed.

Finally, I installed Hostal, which is a great Hosts file editor that comes with a huge list of blocked sites already attached.

An update to Safari came through just a couple of days after I did this, and it got rid of a few things that had been disturbing me, the most notable being the "white flash" issue that occurred when clicking through links. It reminded me a lot of the JavaScript popups that occur on sites that have pervasive ads.

To make sure that Safari is doing its job I've taken to looking at the cookie count every now and then. I clean the cache and then check to see whats been saved. Aside from one persistant cookie for a BBS I never use, and a few cache files for various Google-related servers that I can't seem to block (I seriously think they change originating servers when the cache files bounce back), everything seems to be working as I want it.

I have now relegated the other browsers back to being curiosities, but they'll be updated and sync'd with my Safari plist just in case.

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Answer 6

Klaus1

Level 9

52,879 points

Nov 25, 2011 4:31 PM in response to William Mcclatchey1

Download and install the Ghostery extension.

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