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I want to retain cookie permissions, but delete all cookies


Julianon

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My excellent "Cookie Controller" addon for Firefox allows me fine control over the cookies for each site that I visit, but I now have a problem with CCleaner.  At each site:

 * I want to set the precise cookie permissions and retain them through CCleaner cleaning.

 * I nevertheless want to use CCleaner to delete *all* cookies after each visit.

 

Unchecking "Cleaner - - > Applications - - > Site Preferences" has the result that the permissions are retained.  But as far as I can understand as non-techie, it also results in other data being retained, which I don't want to happen.

 

How do I achieve what I want to do? 

 

I know that this question has been asked before, and I have read the answers, but I am still unclear on two precise points:

 * What other data apart from just the cookie permissions is retained when "Site preferences" is unchecked"?

 * Are the Firefox files that contain the cookie permissions themselves classified as "cookies"?

 

Perhaps I should be writing my own little batch file!

 

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have you tried adding the cookies you want to keep to the Cookies to keep list?

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not an area I need to manage as I only ever use my browsers in Private Mode.

so hopefully another member will chime in, but I believe CC can either keep or clean cookies - full stop.

I'm not even 100% sure what you mean by cookie permissions, so you want all cookies deleted but some part of them kept.

You may have to explain your concept of permissions so others aren't as confused as me (admittedly that doesn't take much sometimes) :huh:

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What does the term "cookie permissions" mean as you use it? 

- - - - -

Edit, 25 Nov 14: 

The documentation for Cookie Controller 3.7 says it will, among other things, delete cookies.

Would it be acceptable to have CCleaner just leave them alone and let Cookie Controller . . .  errrr, "Control" them? 

The CCleaner SLIM version is always released a bit after any new version; when it is it will be HERE :-)

Pssssst: ... It isn't really a cloud. Its a bunch of big, giant servers.

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Thanks for these replies.  Everything about cookies seems extremely complicated, and it looks as if I should also ask the "Cookie Controller" developers what is going on.  I am not a techie, and I do not know what the term "cookie permissions" means in tecthnical language, even though we all routinely use cookie permissions in Firefox -- > Tools - - > Options - - > Privacy and in various Firefox cookie addons.

 

What I would like from a CCleaner techie is the answers to the two questions in my first post:

 * What other data apart from just the cookie permissions is retained when "Site preferences" is unchecked"?

 * Are the Firefox files that contain the cookie permissions themselves classified as "cookies"?

plus some advice as to how to achieve the aims that I set out in my original post.

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as to advice from a CC techie, you'll have to raise a support ticket with them from the Piriform website.

even non Pro version users can raise one, you just don't get priority support.

they rarely, dare I say never, respond directly on this forum.

 

on the CC side of it, I believe all it does is either keep or delete cookies on the file level, not at the content level (after-all that's all a cookie it, a text file), I'm not aware of it delving deeper in what you may be referring to (or thinking as) cookies permissions but as you say, that would be an area best responded to by someone from CC or Cookie Controller.

Backup now & backup often.
It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.
Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last.

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I don't know the answers to your 2 questions in post 7, but like mta said, I think CCleaner will only ignore cookies or delete them.

 

I can't find "Cleaner - - > Applications - - > Site Preferences" (quoting from from your first post).

I may be overlooking something obvious.

Is it a Firefox option? A CCleaner option?  How do I navigate to it? 

 

Whatever it is, since the Cookie Controller addon will delete cookies, why not use it and have CCleaner leave cookies alone? 

The CCleaner SLIM version is always released a bit after any new version; when it is it will be HERE :-)

Pssssst: ... It isn't really a cloud. Its a bunch of big, giant servers.

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Thanks, Kroozer. 

 

Don't have that here.  This Firefox is portable, temporary, and sandboxed, maybe CCleaner doesn't know it is there?

 

Must now bow out of this topic, don't know enough to help.  

The CCleaner SLIM version is always released a bit after any new version; when it is it will be HERE :-)

Pssssst: ... It isn't really a cloud. Its a bunch of big, giant servers.

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Thanks once again for all that feedback.  I'll have one more go at clarifying the question, in painful detail this time, before writing directly for support.  I believe that the question has general interest, but is rather technical in nature, so that Piriform's techies themselves should therefore answer it on the Forum.

 

I performed the following operations:

 * Uncheck Cleaner - - > Applications - - > Site Preferences (all other Firefox boxes checked) and then perform "Run Cleaner".

 * Check Cleaner - - > Applications - - > Site Preferences and then perform just "Analyse".

 

The "Analyse" operation found the following two files in my Firefox profile (Windows 7 Pro):

* content-prefs.sqlite

* permissions.sqlite

(plus two files called "cont" and "perm" buried deep in Kaspersky's "SafeBrowser" directories — presumably analogous).

I did not go on to perform "Run Cleaner", so these two files (plus the two Kaspersky ones) are still there.

 

QUESTION:

1.  Are the contents of these two files some form of cookies?

2.  Do these two files compromise my privacy in any way whatsoever?

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Site-specific preferences: The permissions.sqlite and content-prefs.sqlite files store many of your Firefox permissions (for instance, which sites are allowed to display popups) or zoom levels that are set on a site-by-site basis. For more information, see Permissions Manager - Give certain websites the ability to store passwords, set cookies and more and Font size and zoom - increase the size of web pages.

that quote is from here; https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data

 

so to answer your concerns;

1) yes, they are some sort of cookie if you apply the definition of a cookie being a file used by a browser to store info and to identify a user in order to customise web pages.

2) yes, as they would contain some sort of personal data, whether that data is sensitive, who can say.

Backup now & backup often.
It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.
Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last.

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Thank you very much indeed, mta, for this advice.  The Firefox URLs that you gave explain things well, and the Firefox URL "about:permissions" was a revelation to me!  I reckon that clears up just about everything, but I have two more very specific questions:

 

QUESTION 1:  Is there any information contained in the two files "content-prefs.sqlite" and "permissions.sqlite" that is *not* displayed by about:permissions?  I am hoping that the answer here is, "No".

 

QIESTION 2:  When I visit a website, can that website read the contents of the two files "content-prefs.sqlite" and "permissions.sqlite" off my computer?

For example, at the very least these files contain a list of websites that I visit seriously enough to allow cookies for — I don't really want a shop to know what other shops I regularly visit.  Again, I am hoping that the answer here is, "No".

 

By the way, I am not paranoid.  I just live in the post-Snowden era.

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I will at least give you my understanding/guess in regard to your questions, but @Winapp2.ini is the resident forum guru on all things Firefox (lets see if you can stump him!)

 

1) No, BUT, about:permissions gives you access to user controllable fields, there would be some sort of system fields but what they are I couldn't say

2) No, FF reads those files, not the website.

Backup now & backup often.
It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.
Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last.

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Once again, thanks very much mta.  Your answers are what I had hoped, and look pretty sensible, and the second answer particularly is reassuring.  I've sent a private email off to Winapp2.ini asking if he has any further wisdom on the subject.  My simple questions about maintaining cookie privacy have quickly got astonishingly complicated.

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