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Is it ever advisable/secure/safe/practical to clear cookies (Safari, other browsers) on my MacBook Pro? How often should one do so to prevent /do something about web tracking? Any better solution?

Is it ever advisable/secure/safe/practical toclear cookies (Safari, other browsers) on my MacBook Pro? If so, how often should one do so to prevent / do something about web tracking? Any better solution?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jul 14, 2013 9:53 AM

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Posted on Jul 14, 2013 10:49 AM

I have Firefox set to clear all my cookies on browser quit (at least daily, sometimes more often.) Helps defeat tracking. But I do save a few from session to session, including some from Apple, so I don't get the annoying survey request. I also manually remove them if I'm not ready to quit the browser.


Firefox is the only browser I know of that allows saving some cookies while removing all others.


http://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/09/configure-firefox-to-delete-all-cookies-on-exit -but-select-ones/


If a cookie contains login information, I've never found it a big deal just to login again.

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Jul 14, 2013 10:49 AM in response to A-NmN.

I have Firefox set to clear all my cookies on browser quit (at least daily, sometimes more often.) Helps defeat tracking. But I do save a few from session to session, including some from Apple, so I don't get the annoying survey request. I also manually remove them if I'm not ready to quit the browser.


Firefox is the only browser I know of that allows saving some cookies while removing all others.


http://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/09/configure-firefox-to-delete-all-cookies-on-exit -but-select-ones/


If a cookie contains login information, I've never found it a big deal just to login again.

Jul 14, 2013 11:09 AM in response to WZZZ

Hi, WZZZ,


Thanks! That's what I have been doing as well. Just that it gets quite a bit tiresome having to delete them so often since I use Safari. Google seems to have a long list of them. Heck, they all appear to be perstient and repopulate right away, even when you click on the next tab in preferences!

Jul 14, 2013 11:38 AM in response to A-NmN.

It can sometimes be a pain, but I have Google cookies blocked. In addition, if you use the NoScript Add-on for Firefox, that will automatically sanitize Google's link tracking redirects from Google searches. But you can do that with Redirect Cleaner also. That way, I can use Google to search without fear of having every search tracked and searching with Google still works just fine.


There are other search engines which protect privacy, like Startpage, but unfortunately, Google is the best. It comes up with results the others don't get.


For me, Safari is much too limiting. The Add-ons give much more flexibility. This is what I can do with cookies in Firefox.


User uploaded file

Jul 14, 2013 2:24 PM in response to A-NmN.

A-NmN. wrote:


how often should one do so to prevent / do something about web tracking? Any better solution?


Firefox browser, because it has the most add-ons and also the only one with NoScript.


https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/



the add-ons of


Ghostery (enable all in preferences, web trackers, Flash and Silverlight cookies etc)


TrackMeNot (sends random search data to search engines as they record all your searches)


HTTPSEverywhere (from the EFI, asks for a encrypted connection from all websites if possible)


Click&Clean (cleans all info upon exit to reduce History Sniffing, cookies etc)


AdBlock Plus (enable ALL blocking in preferences or Google ads get through)


NoScript (drag a Temp Allow All button to the FF toolbar, click only if you trust the site)


WebofTrust (community driven warning system of bad sites/links and whatever)



Use DuckDuckGo as your search engine, they don't record your searches.



Of course all this is diddle squat as the NSA records all Internet traffic, passes what they find to the FBI and your ISP has your physical location.


So your not anonymous, but at least you can block all the others.


Use Safari for those sites that won't work under your FF configuration.


Don't use Chrome as it's Google and they are the biggest trackers of them all.

Jul 14, 2013 3:03 PM in response to A-NmN.

In addition to ds store's exhaustive list, for Firefox, check out the BetterPrivacy extension. In addition to cookies, Flash data is stored by websites in user/Library/Preferences/Macromedia in a #SharedObjects directory that is persistent from session to session. You can manually delete what's in #SharedObjects on a regular basis or let BetterPrivacy do it for you. Either way, another method of tracking gets disrupted.

Jul 14, 2013 5:20 PM in response to WZZZ

Yup! That defintely sounds like an all around solution in progress as FF seems to be looking out for ways to let us know somebody is sniffing around on us. Will check it out. May come back for more. By the way just in case you have an idea. Every time I go to check my gmail, google simple casually checks/logs me into everyhting on their menu wihtout asking me wether to do so or not! It is really getting to p&%^^s me off. Can anything be done about this? They give you some convoluted way to opt-out/delete any service(s) you happen not to like, but they know full well that not every one will be able to or bother going through their meandaring maize. Any thoughts? Man, I am about to switch to Thunderbird !!

Jul 14, 2013 7:10 PM in response to A-NmN.

A-NmN. wrote:


Ok! I actually forgot how to get to the user place in system prefs. Also what is BatteryPrivecy? Is it a Safari extension downloadable from this Apple website?

It's BetterPrivacy, and it works with Firefox as I said, so you get it by opening the Add-Ons window in Firefox (Shift-Command A) and looking for it in Search Ad-ons. With that Add-On you won't need to delete anything manually from /Users/username/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/#SharedObjects.

Is it ever advisable/secure/safe/practical to clear cookies (Safari, other browsers) on my MacBook Pro? How often should one do so to prevent /do something about web tracking? Any better solution?

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