Status of CCleaner & evercookies

[anna24]

Dogatmyfeet - easy now. Let's try to keep it polite. "Can't we all just get along?"

I think the answer to your question is there's no official claim by CCleaner that it will handle cleaning all evercookies (why would we be interested in "some"?). That doesn't mean it doesn't - or does, AFAICT.

 

Alan_B -what's wrong, man?!? Don't beat a newbie up. Maybe he could've phrased his question better, but your rhetoric about "will handle all future cookies..." What kind of a statement is that? How can any software claim to deal w/ any issue that hasn't been invented? The rest is just being contenscious. Help a brother out.

 

- DAMF - CCleaner apparently does find some evercookies. Maybe all in the (for now) normal hiding places, but AFAICT there's no official claim by any official Periform representatinve that CCleaner cleans all (known, at the present) evercookies.

 

I suppose one could intentionally go to sites known to be using them & try to get them set in all places listed on research sites, in the 12 - 15 or so places they can be stored & see what CCleaner finds. [one evercookie can be in 1, 2 or all 12 - 15 places at same time] My understanding from reading is, one cookie isn't usually stored in all possible locations. But to know if ANY cleaner can find all locations, something would have to exist in all locations. That would be a bit of work - just verifying they exist in all known locations, or creating them. Again, a bit of work

[Nergal]

SIGH

Wikipedia

Standard HTTP cookies

Local Shared Objects (Flash cookies)

Silverlight Isolated Storage

Storing cookies in RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out

Storing cookies in Web history

Storing cookies in HTTP ETags

Storing cookies in Web cache

window.name caching

Internet Explorer userData storage

HTML5 Session Storage

HTML5 Local Storage

HTML5 Global Storage

HTML5 Database Storage via SQLite

https://en.wikipedia...wiki/Evercookie

 

Yes Ccleaner cleans all of this

[Alan_B]

Alan_B -what's wrong, man?!? Don't beat a newbie up.

Sorry - I was not beating up a newbie.

I was responding as one software engineer to another engineer who required a statement of fact upon capability of defending against malware that is changing and therefore unknown.

e.g. immediately below the examples quoted by Nergal from https://en.wikipedia...wiki/Evercookie

The developer is looking to add the following features:

• Caching in HTTP Authentication
  
• Using Java to produce a unique key based on NIC information.
  

Perhaps the developer has by now added such features, and perhaps some other things also.

[anna24]

Yes Ccleaner cleans all of this

What's the official statement of Piriform / CCleaner that states such? Maybe not listing all the locations as you did, but...

As w/ any product or business, non specific statements / claims like, "We do it all;" We clean up everthing;" "We're # 1," are legally & technically meaningless.

 

FYI, as I mentioned earlier, it doesn't find / clean webappstore.sqlite for me in Firefox, although I intentionally caused data to be saved there. Bleach Bit finds it, but it can't handle profiles in non-default locations (for now). Just sayin. I doubt any cleaning prgm could handle all locations that evercookies can be hidden (now), 100% of the time.

 

Since evercookies are set by scripts, their developers can continually change where they're hidden. Yes, they're hacking the browsers. They were from the moment they ignored browser settings of "disable all cookies," but set them anyway, like ANY OTHER malicious script. Browsers devs may plug that hole & trackers / data miners will find another way. They SHOULD be thrown in jail / fined HEAVILY, just like someone hacking a credit card co. But for $ome rea$on, authorities & brow$er dev$ have looked the other way, so far.

[Nergal]

If you, ever, want an official statement (i.e. beyond the word of a moderator) then you will have to be extremely patient, as they rarely if ever take part in the conversations here.

 

Evercookie Developers can only change to locations that the client (your webbrowser) has access to. The above list is those locations

[anna24]

As I said, from any sort of "product features" (admittedly, often vague) statement, CCleaner apparently doesn't officially handle evercookies, in a reasonably complete way - as evercookies are known to exist / behave, at present. I know it doesn't (appear to) handle them completely for me.

 

As java scripts, they can do anything that any java script might be able to do, within the browser, or from a browser to the system or to other apps. They can do what ever the hell they want, w/in the confines of js abilities. Just because the developer of evercookie & other companies that are now using the technology have been "playing fairly nice" up to now (maybe to avoid jail), in no way predicts what they may stoop to in the future. I imagine true hackers will take it & really start doing some damage.

[Nergal]

<<<<<<<< has removed himself from this thread, to save self-frustration

[hazelnut]

anna24 perhaps you might like to read info given in this thread here which was actually started the same day as this one.

 

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=323337

[Andavari]

CCleaner really needs to deal with the Firefox user profile file "webappsstore.sqlite" if Piriform even know of it. I use a batch file and BleachBit to delete it.

[Guest MrT]

We haven't been able to find any problems cleaning "webappsstore.sqlite". This is part of the Cookies cleaning for FF. Please, let us now which cookie in particular that you haven't been able to clean.

 

As far as evercookie (http://samy.pl/evercookie/), we also haven't found any issues. This is true for all supported browsers.

Please make sure that the following rules are also cleaned before going back to the evercookie page:

Multimedia->Adobe Flash Player

Multimedia->Microsoft Silverlight

[Nergal]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Developer/Official Word

 

Thanks for the input MrT

[anna24]

Thanks MrT Official Bug Fixer Bug Fixers (trying to make Login123, now "title-less", feel better)

I intentionally loaded some data in webappstore.sqlite in one "test" profile (located in same user acct as CCleaner was started under). It couldn't find that file. That profile was in the default location for FF. It didn't have an evercookie in it, but it had data. There're not many cleaners I know of that inspect the data inside, say an index.dat file, & decide if it needs / doesn't need cleaning. In fact, most times if files on the app's "to clean" list, exists at all - even empty - they find / delete them.

 

I'm not biased toward BleachBit. I use CCleaner far more often, but BB, for instance, did find that webappstore.sqlite file, in this case. I really don't know what the problem was.

[login123]

Thanks MrT Official Bug Fixer Bug Fixers (trying to make Login123, now "title-less", feel better)

 

Thanks anna24. Very considerate of you. Back on topic, I avoid the more agressive "cleaners" out there. One little goof up, long time to fix it. CCleaner has always been good enough.