Why can't I delete website data in iOS 10.3?

Hi,

I had a question about the steps, are there additional steps if you have 3 devices all contected by the cloud (iPhone 7, iPad, Mac)? Do you need to log out of the cloud first on each device so these 'evercookies' are not replaced again? Sorry for the questions, I am just having such a difficult time with this issue. I sincerely Thank you for any advice! -K

A quick update on the issue based on my experience with Apple Support

I have been asking them over the last 3 months about the progress of this issue, they repeatedly only reply with advising me to keep my software up to date (seriously)

I was told that this issue will not be fixed any sooner than iOs 11

When I asked about a way to manually fix it, I was told about being able to delete this information through your Google settings, as Safari uses Google as it's browser

When you go to the google home page in Safari, at the top right there is an icon that represents your account, it could be a letter or picture that you have chosen

If you click on there and scroll all the way to the bottom, you will see an option to click on called 'Account settings'

It is somewhere in here according to this support person.

I don't remember every step after this, unfortunately.

Maybe you can look around those settings and figure it out.

That is what a Level 2 support person told me over the phone.

Maybe this will help or not

-K

I had this problem and tried dealing with it through safari. For a while.

The one solution that worked for me was the following.

On the IPad go to Settings > General > storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage >

then find and select the Safari app on the list below, select website data.

Hit "Remove all Website Data"

Hopefully that helps.

Hadn't thought of that idea, unfortunately it didn't work and more worryingly it made me aware of another issue. Not only is Safari not deleting the cookies it is also not properly deleting the history.

I closed Safari from the background then went to the Safari settings and hit 'Clear History and Website Data'. Now I went to Manage Storage settings for Safari and not only is there 534KB of Website Data there is also 344KB of History still in use! Repeated attempts to delete it do nothing.

I sure hope this gets fixed in iOS11, this is a pretty serious bug that Apple have left unresolved for 3 successive software updates.

the two don’t have really anything to do with one another. Firefox at least lets you clear your cache/cookies. Regardless if you’re hooked up to a VPN you will inevitably, or likely, get those pesky supercookies back (although it’s interesting to me the one girl claims she is cookie free after a reset and VPN install -I doubt it, but could these supercookies be IP specific?). Specifically, ipv6 specific (which unless you are using wi-fi on a router rigged to disable ipv6 -your Apple device won’t allow a VPN to mask your ipv6 [ipv4 only]).

I dont think there are any VPNs masking Ipv6 successfully yet (correct me if Im wrong, and please cite a working VPN that spoofs Ipv6 please!). Your PC or Laptop will allow one to disable ipv6, & remove gateway route, et. Which iPhones do not (see previous router comment).

My guess is that until the bug gets fixed, even when one uses a VPN their Safari supercookies will eventually repopulate. The caveat being those cookies/website data were tracking a proxy/VPN IP (not yours!). Sans Ipv6, ofc.

I forgot to mention, if you go to settings>restrictions>safari>disable... you wont have any new cookies repopulate. Its a pain, using FF or another browser (bc Safari is the default for mail and other links), but I disabled Safari long ago and just have the 3.... citi.com, walgreens.com, and google.com. Ise Firefox or maybe Dolphin until this bug is fixed. Safari is worthless. Even in Private browsing w/ supercookies embebed (for lack of a better word in Safari), you’ll get pinged by other cookies google.analytics, ajax,xyz.net, et. Run a program from pingplotter.com on your laptop or PC and you’ll see what I mean. My main machines are locked down with a gHacks user profile which is awesome on a PC -but you cant set up about:comfig FF, for eg., on iphone. Sorry to hijack this post... privacy is important (most of is prob aren’t doing anything wrong), but it’s the principle. #eff.org (and if your really spooked by this, the App Store does have an Onion browser (but im too impatient to run Tor... it’s way too slow for my work/computing needs). Keep the updates coming. Id love to hear a working fix (Ive tried every one suggested in this thread -and others). Peace!

Hello,

I have found a rather tedious but sure way to fix this. I tried the suggestions by earlier posts to no avail, but the method I am about to describe below works for me in one try. (Tried and tested myself) I am on IOS 10.3.3.

1. Create backup with iTunes.

2. Download iBackupBot (a program to explore your backup file)

3. Remember to make a duplicate of your backup file in case of any mistakes that would destroy your backup.

4. Now using iBackupBot, in the left hand menu, navigate through: User App Files > com.apple.mobilesafari > Library > Safari > WebKit > WebsiteData > WebSQL.

5. Under WebSQL, you would be able to see those un-deletable website data lying around. Delete all of them using the delete option in iBackupBot.

6. Now that you have modified your backup, proceed to reset and erase all content in your iphone.

7. Power on resetted iphone and select "restore from backup".

8. From iTunes, restore the modified backup to your phone. The phone should be back exactly where you left off, except for the website data, which are all gone.

I created an account just to post this as I have not been able to find a solution anywhere. Hope it helps.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with iBackupBot, and not responsible for any lost of data. Please proceed knowing exactly what you are doing.

Have a nice day.

I may have found a fix, I'm running iOS 10.3.3 on iPhone 7 plus. What I noticed was that there were 3 items that were still remaining even after manually selecting each item and swiping to delete, they were there when I went to check if they cleared. What was worse is that I closed every tab I had in safari, and force closed the app, and upon just opening safari with out navigating to any sites more cookies and temp files would generate in the website data view. This makes me think the cookies that were left behind are malicious in nature. What I did to fix this is turn off wifi and Bluetooth, then put the phone in airplane mode, closed all tabs in safari, force closed Safari, held down the power button until the 'slide to power off' slider appears, let go of the power button, then held down the home button until the slider disappeared. I then went over to the website data and manually deleted each one by sliding each item to the left and tapping delete. After I checked again the website data no longer showed any websites.

I've been experimenting. I can delete all cookies. But as soon as I open even one page (example: nytimes.com) a bunch reappear. This is exactly what is supposed to happen, however. ALL websites use cookies. They are an integral part of Internet access. Websites don't work without them. A website can have thousands or millions of users. When you connect it has no idea of who you are; you are just one of millions. So the site puts some identifying information about you into a cookie so the next time you connect it knows who you are and what you have done in the past. If you don't want this to happen simply go to settings/safari, tap Block Cookies, and tap Always Block. If you think your most important problem is seeing cookies that you apparently can't delete, this will fix it. Of course, it will also break the Internet for you, but that is apparently of lower priority to you.

What you should check is Allow from current website only or Allow from Websites I visit. These are compromise settings that allow websites you "like" to know who you are, but prevents other sites that might provide content to the site you are visiting from knowing about you. This will not prevent other sites from placing cookies, but the cookies will have zero length because they have been blocked.

The bottom line is you can either have no cookies, or you can actually use the Internet. You can't have it both ways.

Are you an official Apple spokesperson? Thank you for explaining the role of a 'cookie' But this is an identifiable issue that Apple has said they are aware of. On my Mac, this is not a problem at all. iPhone/iPad users should have the ability to clear cookies, bottom line.

pinksparkle164 wrote:

Are you an official Apple spokesperson?

This is a user-to-user technical support forum. Apple's participation is minimal. The Hosts keep order and make sure that we all abide by the Terms of Use. Their avatars are purple apples. The Community Specialists answer question in certain forums that have gone unanswered and can be resolved with a link to a support article. Their avatars are black apples. Lawrence is a user just as your or I are.

No, I am not an Apple spokesperson. I am a developer with 50 years experience who is currently deploying and operating websites for multiple clients. I know a lot about websites and cookies. And I know that to focus on whether or not you can delete cookies is a waste of time, because the best you can do is delete them until you next open any website. And you also can't delete them if you have any pages or tabs open in your browser; they come right back. And there's no point in deleting cookies anyway, because they are not dangerous, do not compromise anything about you that you haven't already compromised by simply going to a website, and are essential to the operation of a browser.

If you want to worry about them please do, but you are wasting your time and energy.

Your explanation of cookies is perfectly valid and that is how it should work, except with iOS 10.3 onwards for some users it simply doesn’t. Even if I select block all cookies, close all open webpages, force close Safari, clear all website data and restart my phone there are cookies written to my device before I open any webpage and not all of the cookies are 0b, some persistently hold data. 


Like you say they may not be something to "worry" about in terms of compomising you as there are plenty of other ways to track your usage. They are however an inconvenience, for example when using affiliate sites. I keep getting missing cashback due to persistent cookie data not being cleared. My purchases are then attributed to the incorrect originating site.

More to the point it is a known bug as openly admitted by several "senior" Apple technicians that I have spoken with, and has been present for three point releases so it really should be fixed by now.

Exactly. Well stated. It is an opinion if you chose to tell people to not 'worry' about it. It is a matter of having the ability to do so if we want to. Before the last few updates, the ability to remove website data from safari actually worked as it is supposed to, which means it is something that can be fixed and should be fixed. I hope and would like to believe that it will be fixed before the anticipated new software and phones, but as one user previously mentioned, after a few betas in testing, the issue was still not resolved.

Lumens wrote:

More to the point it is a known bug as openly admitted by several "senior" Apple technicians that I have spoken with, and has been present for three point releases so it really should be fixed by now.

Yes, it is a known bug. I don't know how many open bugs there are in iOS currently, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was over 10,000 given that the "application" is over 2 GB and I saw an estimate from a knowledgeable NASA developer of 10 million lines of code. Even 10,000 means that there are problems in only 0.1% of the lines of code, so 10,000 may be very low. Each of them takes time to analyze, assign to a developer, fix, test, and regression test to determine that fixing it didn't break something else. Each is also assigned to a release. As this one is not a security vulnerability, does not cause iOS to crash or cause applications to crash, does not corrupt data, does not cause backups to fail (there is one of those currently extant), and won't even be noticed by 99.99% of users I would guess it is pretty low on the priority list.