Using Safari > Privacy it can be seen that HarborFreight.com places a cookie on my machine. When "Remove All" is selected it is removed but after a few seconds this nefarious cookie pops up again!
Any idea about how to keep it from popping up?
From my experience it seems that if a user empties caches (Develop menu) and delete other data twice,
the removal sticks.
About Screenshots:
I use built-in "Wave" desktop picture, Markup feature and TextEdit.
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19143?locale=en_US
Back to HARBOR FREIGHT and Badgeville:
We can check a website page for the website data it is going to store in various folders
using the "Inspect Element" tool Safari provides.
Right/control click on a page and choose Inspect Element menu option from the contextual menu.
An Inspect Element window will open at the bottom of the page.
Click the "Storage" tab in the toolbar..
If you don't see the Storage tab, click the "+" button to reveal the options bar and select "Storage".
Click "All Storage" button in the left sidebar and go through the list.
Apple Support Community page:
You will se Badgeville listed.
.
To dismiss the window, click the "X" button at the top left corner.
Harbor Freight page:
You will see that in addition to "harbor freight", data from Akamai and "add this" stored.
Safari 10 Website Data
How to delete Databases and Local Storage items?
Backup your Mac.
Quit Safari.
Hold the Option key on the keyboard down and click the “Go”menu in the Finder menu bar.
Choose “Library” from the dropdown.
Select "List" view in the Finder toolbar.
Scroll down the list.
Click open the Safari folder.
Scroll down the list and click open the “Databases” folder.
Click open the “IndexedDB folder”.
If you find the items there, right click and choose “Move to Trash”.
Scroll down the list and click open the “Local Storage” folder
Right click the items you want to remove and choose “Move to Trash”.
Restart, launch Safari and test.
Dominic - that seemed like a really good instruction. Great step-by-step and annotated screen shots.
1. When I followed the directions I have to admit that I didn't "back up my Mac". Mea Culpa. Instead I went exploring to see what there was in the folder "___IndexedDB". As it turned out it was almost empty but there was a Harbor freight Folder item there. Hmmm....
2. So, I deleted it. (still not backed up; however, it was just a single item, what could that hurt, eh?
3. Then deleted it from the trash and re-started the computer.
4. This was after it was deleted the computer was restarted and the Harbor Freight cookie was still there! Along with one other, "badgeville.com" that was there with it earlier. I had never seen this one until the Harbor Freight cookie started showing up so I think they might be related.
5. Anyway, after deleting them and rebooting it looked like this:
6. In "___IndexedDB" there was no Harbor Freight (HF) Folder. What is weird is that even though the HF Folder was deleted and deleted from the Trash, the HF cookie still shows up!
7. I went into History and Cleared History. Checked Privacy again and .... there is the Harbor Freight cookie!
8. What do you think of that?
My comment to everyone who doesn't want to be tracked is that they should avoid going to the Harbor Freight web site. This is terrible!
I wouldn't worry about badgeville.com website data item.
That is associated with sites like Apple Support communities.
There are very hard to remove cookies called "evercookies".
These cookies are stored in multiple locations and are persistent.
If a user removes it from one location, it will be repopulated from other locations.
I intentionally browsed this harborfreight.com website , when opened safari and its preferences and tried by clicking on manage website data and clicked on remove it was stuck there only .
Entered into the user library : macOS Sierra: Library folder
And find a folder safari > Databases > right clicked on http_harborfreight.com_0 and moved to trash , restarted and emptied the trash , then again gone to safari preferences > privacy > manage website data it was still there .
So , again gone to safari folder , that is same in the user library selected all contents ( command + A ) and deleted ( command + delete ) to the trash , restarted the machine and emptied the trash , it was gone .
tygb wrote:
So , again gone to safari folder , that is same in the user library selected all contents ( command + A ) and deleted ( command + delete ) to the trash , restarted the machine and emptied the trash , it was gone .
Need some help here. I get the concept because I've been to "Library > Safari [folder] > Databases [folder]" several times, but I can't follow the instruction above.
1. Does this sentence refer to the screen shot that is above it? (picture below is a screen shot of a portion of the one you posted above from your machine)
2. Because if it does, then I've already deleted this folder some time ago so it doesn't exist anymore. However .... the Harbor Freight cookie is still showing up in the list of cookies on my machine.
3. This is what my Finder > Option+Go Library looks like:
So, should everything under Safari be deleted? Because that is a LOT of stuff! Four Folders such as Databases, LocalStorage, ReadingListArchives, Touch Icons Cache, and numerous files?
I never save history and cookies usually in my system as I have set private browsing permanently , and in very rare conditions if normal browsing is done I use clear all history and web site data at the end of the day , and regarding synching of bookmarks I drag and drop the links to the book mark side bar .
Here is the scree shot of system preferences > I cloud .
Created a new account and didn't set up I cloud and again viewed harbor web site , by deleting " All contents of safari folder " from the user library , once again gone to safari > safari preferences > manage web site data I could not find out harbor web site residues .
Drew - thanks for your question and double checking, good quality assurance check. Just did a double-check and there is nothing in iCloud like that which is checked and if anything was it would be with the computer I'm using to write. In fact there are only just a few things checked 'cuz I don't want to pay rent.
On another note, going back to something that Eric wrote about "deleting twice" (or something like that), think it was on Page 2, there are a lot more cookies trying to be saved now than before the Library deletion so he might be onto something. After just being on two sites, before coming to the Apple Communities Safari thread, this is what I had to delete:
Egad, 42 of 'em. Oh, and "Yes," I did hit the blue button!
The first site would normally generate around 10 to 12 and this is with Safari > Privacy > "Always Block" selected. Can't speak for Vimeo because I just clicked on a video link.
My machine has been infected by this pest, too.
I did an EasyFindsearch through all files. Activate these option! I've been searching for content, the phrase, in packages and invisible items. EasyFind has found the data you can see in the screenshots:
I've deleted all these items, emptied the trash bin, deleted all website data in Safari > Preferences > Data Security > Manage Website Data, I have restarted the machine. And – voilá – a virgin Safari without any harbor experiences, particularly without harborfreight database has been appearing.
Hope this helps!
Kind regards, Friedrich
From the second article I posted a link for. Until someone develops a program that can search a hard drive for all the files installed, it is unlikely you can get rid of it because it reinstalls itself.
An Evercookie is not merely difficult to delete. It actively "resists" deletion by copying itself in different forms on the user's machine and resurrecting itself if it notices that some of the copies are missing or expired.[12] Specifically, when creating a new cookie, Evercookie uses the following storage mechanisms when available:
Another little addition: I *think* that in step 3 above that I MAY not have closed Safari. I don't remember. In any event, HF doesn't show up any more under "___IndexedDB".
The other thing of interest is that in the original HF cooking listing there was a red box with HFT letters in it along side the HF cookie where as now it isn't there any more.
Tried to find a Cache for "badgeville.com" and couldn't.
There is one other cookie that seemed to be showing up regularly along with HF and, now, badgeville (didn't write down it's name though).
Dang! What a mess!
re the Wikipedia articles. That was NOT a fun read! Wasn't aware that these kind of things existed but, frankly, not really surprised.
So, okay guys, what to do now?
1. If I copy all my files over to a hard drive (oh my gosh, what a work effort) isn't there a good chance that the Harbor Freight (HF) "virus" will be copied over too? I certainly don't want to contaminate any of my other equipment then reformat the drive and reload everything?
2. Badgeville.com cookie: I don't recall this ever showing up before, only since visiting HF and trying to delete their virus cookie. If it is just the Apple site that uses it, that's one thing, but if other sites use it than that's another. Maybe HF uses it too?
3. And there was also one other new cookie I hadn't seen before, too, but I didn't write or take a screen shot of it, but it isn't showing up now so maybe that's good.
4. Fortunately, there wasn't much done since visiting Harbor Freight, or should that be Harbor Fright?
I'm really open to ideas. It isn't like I didn't have anything else to do then this happened.
Eric - that was a VERY helpful post you had back there, and this one is too.
As a Level 10 Guru, what would you recommend to do at this point?
My fear is that if this computer "touches" anything, such as another computer or device, that "cookie" [it's more like a virus] could contaminate it too. In the list of items above and in the Wikipedia articles I didn't read anything that would indicate it could be embedded in a document. RGB was mentioned but I don't know if that was meant to be something with color, like maybe a picture or video?, or something different.
If it doesn't contaminate files like documents, pictures, or emails, then perhaps copying these items to another drive and wiping the computer's hard drive would be the way to go. What do you think?
Went out of this thread to see what others had posted in Safari and, lo and behold, there others having similar problems with cookies from other sites. This is looking more like a virus than just a cookie issue!
Harbor Freight Cookie - cannot delete!
