Clearing Safari website data does not delete everything - iPhone

The policy of Apple and the Community is to make suggestions for fixes and improvements at apple.com/feedback. The community is the place where we get together to explore problems we are having or learn how to do things from experienced users.

If you don't use apple.com/feedback, once you've ascertained that a flaw exists and needs to be fixed, PLEASE DO.

There may be ultra-dedicated Apple employees the peruse the Community sometimes, but it would strictly be for individual interest.

I have submitted a few feedback issues on safari cookies since iOS 7. For whatever reason Apple has not chosen to 1) fully clean out cookies or 2) give us an option to block cookies from websites with suffixes other than the sites we are visiting. There is no question Apple have heard a lot about it through the years.

GCSS-MC wrote:

And you are not correct that Apple does not read this forum; note that there have been many Apple Community Specialist replies during the past several years .

Community Specialists have one job. They answer questions that have gone unanswered for a day or so and can be answered with a referral to a support article. Posts are routed to them automatically. Neither they nor anyone else sits and reads the forums for suggestions. On occasion, if an engineer is tasked with a particular problem, they may search the forums for examples. However, they also do not sit around reading the forum looking for problems to work on.

So, once again, if you want Apple to know you have an issue, the best thing to do is really to contact support directly.

ParhamS wrote:

On one hand many say Apple does not read here. On the other hand, if you dare speculate on weather in Cupertino, an army of NOT Apple employees descend on you to correct the wrong. Because Apple does not read here.

A question on my mind, I hope one of the NON Apple paid experts would know, if some one post about beta software info that they heard from a tester, would that be against the law, I mean the rules of this "community" forum?

Any discussion of Beta software is restricted to the Beta forum. And one reason that repeating something you heard from a beta tester probably should not be brought up, because the beta version changes almost constantly, and something that a beta tester saw may be different a week later. Several years ago a number of beta testers reported a neat feature in the beta - animated wallpaper on the lock and home screens. When the GA version was released it did not have this feature. Beta testing had revealed that it killed performance and battery life.

I'll address your somewhat snarky first paragraph also, but with a serious answer. Apple does not read the forum (see the post from IdrisSeabright below). However, anyone with more that 150 points has a button to report a post for review. If someone clicks this button a report (with optional comments) goes to a host. The host reviews the post, and may or may not "action" it. Actions can include hiding it or editing it. If it is edited there will be a note saying so added to the post. If it is hidden the poster will receive an email explaining why it was hidden. There can be "collateral damage" from hiding a post - any posts made in response to the hidden post will also be hidden. The posters of these replies to the hidden post will not be notified.

<<I

n general, IMHO, Apple does a poor job in keeping the systems clean. >>

I think Apple does s very good job of cleansing its OS. That is why it is the preferred executive class phone worldwide. Cookie handling is a business decision not mediocre programming. It is easy to produce the code that says "do not permit any cookie with a suffix other than the website visited" or " completely empty the cookies folder".

There are reasons why Apple has permitted the hundreds of cookies in your cookies folder with 0 KB and cookies from websites you have not visited. Lateral processes are also permitted the reload cookies once you delete them — the main frustration expressed in this thread.

In this long thread we have made it pretty clear we are dissatisfied with current Safari cookie management. However, make no mistake, there are business reasons why changes have been made to accommodate cookie management frustrations over several versions of macOS.

<<Safari cookie management has the option "From Current Website Only" and "From Website I Visit"

>>

What those choices mean is that the sites you visit can add all the cookies they want, regardless of the cookie suffix. The choices haven't been changed in ages, but, given the fees trackers and Info collectors offer websites, they make little difference in protecting you from cookies of all sorts.

Permitting that IS a business decision.

A different perspective: The choice Apple gives one is to clear the DATA from the website, not to delete the website and its data. When the data is removed, one can verify that the data stored for a particular website is down to zero. If the data is popping back up, then the choice Apple gives one is not effective, and manual deletes are in order.

10.3.3 seems to have fixed it on my iphone 7 but not my ipad pro. Also downloaded and installed the same day. Both OTA. How did you install your updates? Wondering if its an installation error for ipad pro.

I had this issue with my previous 6, bought a brand new 7 recent. It came installed with 10.3.3, it still have the issue. I have tried to remove the zero and non-zero cookies, using all methods that I know of, and ones that were suggested by users here. Obviously it's a bug that the Apple Development team has not addressed, yet.

Installed 10.3.3 on my iPad, and then the trouble started. Settings>Safari>Advanced>Website Data first had two, then four, and now six persistent cookie remnants. Spoke to Tech Support and was informed that this is a known issue. Their solution? Backup iPad, then Settings>General>Reset>Erase All Contents and Settings. Reinstall 10.3.3 and check Website Data. Sure enough, the cookie remnants were gone. Then, following Tech's instructions, I restored my iPad from the backup. Yep. The cookie remnants were still there. You know, in the final analysis, it seems to be more of a nuisance than anything. I don't believe these remnants are a threat. If you want to avoid further remnants, you might open Safari and run in Private mode.