I'm an experienced computer user on Windows 7 x64 SP1. I've used CCleaner for more than 10 years, happily at that, and without coming across any related question that I couldn't solve relatively quickly, and on my own.
Most recently I’ve been dealing with something that will require the insight of someone on this forum, in order to solve:
CCleaner detects, during analyzing, a cookie for outlook.live.com.
I can remove it, but if I analyze again, it re-emerges. I may clean it, but it seemingly self-generates, even if I’m running no applications or have any browsers open.
I don’t allow third-party cookies in my browsers, and I block outlook.live.com specifically. I don’t allow dom.storage. I don’t use Microsoft Outlook.
I do, on occasion, use Microsoft’s live.com webmail. I temporarily allow a cookie for live.com, though I reverse this permission thereafter. I close the browser, use CCleaner, and don’t allow CCleaner to keep the cookie. I don’t remain signed-in to the webmail.
Does anyone please have any idea where this outlook.live.com cookie comes from, and/or where it might be stored?
Is this somehow embedded into Windows? If so, why wasn’t this so until recently? Its persistence is vexing.
Thanks for any help.
When using the webmail and it's loading these in your web browser login.live.com, mail.live.com, and outlook.live.com you'll get the cookie.
Since CCleaner isn’t deleting it you could try to use the cleaning tool that’s built into your web browser(s) to nuke that cookie - some (Firefox, Chrome/Chromium, etc.,) will let you delete individual cookies if you don’t wish to remove them all.
Edit:
Then again I've seen a ghost cookie show up in CCleaner before, but when looking in the web browser it doesn't exist, although I haven't had that particular issue for at least two years now.
The webmail only requires a cookie to be allowed for login.live.com.
I detect its presence in my browser.
My browser that I use for the webmail removes all cookies on exit. Moreover, I disable allowing cookies for login.live.com after using the webmail and before exiting the broswer, on account of not using the webmail very often.
I have previously already blocked the other cookies that you mention, for good measure. That includes outlook.live.com. Again, my browser doesn’t even detect the latter’s presence in any way.
CCleaner sees the login.live.com cookie and also the mysterious outlook.live.com cookie, but no other live.com cookies, and no other outlook cookies, for that matter.
On relaunching my browser, the browser doesn’t show any live.com cookies present. But, analyzing with CCleaner shows that outlook.live.com is there.
It is for the reasons above, that the kind suggestion you’ve made, doesn’t apply. My browser neither shows, nor removes an outlook.live.com.
Is it possible that this outlook.live.com cookie is embedded into the OS? It’s there even if I disconnect the internet and clean the system with not only CCleaner, but with other similar cleaners. I’ve tried this since nothing I’ve attempted seems to keep this cookie from coming back. And that’s the thing; it’s not like CCleaner can’t remove it - it’s that it comes back. But how?
Could you expand on what a ghost cookie is and what can be done about it?
Thanks again.
Some cookies can get stored in the registry. I don't really know how CCleaner is still detecting the cookie when your web browser doesn't list it.
It may help to mention which web browser you're using, that could narrow down the issue.
Of course you could always get a second opinion program that can also list which cookies are on your system, and more specifically where they're located: file, registry.
Thanks very much for your ongoing help.
The browser in question is Firefox. After days of working on this, the only action that has worked has been to do a clean reinstall of that browser. The problem was triggered by its prefs.js file. Even deleting its contents did not help. The outlook.live.com cookie would regenerate as long as the original prefs.js file was located in its original directory, namely the browser's profile folder. Even deleting all of the contents of the prefs.js file did not work.
That's for the good news. The bad news is that now I'm seeing behavior that I've seen previously with CCleaner, on-and-off. The behavior is related to the problem in this thread, and concerns CCleaner showing a cookie named "localhost".
I'm aware of the following, related, thread:
https://forum.piriform.com/?showtopic=40595
In that thread, the moderator informs that:
"You should not have a localhost cookie (unless you have some sort of webserver/proxy-that-serves-up-pages)..."
1. I'm not running a webserver/proxy.
2. CCleaner shows that the localhost cookie is an Internet Explorer cookie. I don't use that browser at all; it is, as you'll likely know, embedded in any Windows OS.
Any idea how to block this localhost cookie?
Many thanks again.