Cookie control

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Thu Jun 29 11:45:01 EDT 2006


  The current thread about eBay had mention about controlling which
cookies one's browser accepts.

  The built-in options in most browsers are "None", "All", and "Ask me
every damn time".  None of these are really acceptable to me.

  Fortunately, there's a nifty Firefox extension called "Permit
Cookies".  It lets me easily set per-domain cookie policy overrides.
Here's how I use it:

  I set Firefox to not accept cookies by default.  Most of the time,
my web browsing isn't affected by this.

  When I hit a site that needs/wants cookies, I just hit [ALT]+[C].  I
get a handy dialog box with the site's second-level-domain already
filled in, and options for "Allow", "Session", "Block", and "Remove".
With a keystroke or three, I can pick which I want.

  For sites I actually want persistent state kept for (e.g., Google),
I choose "Allow".  For sites where I just want to browse but the site
refuses to work without cookies, I pick "Session", which deletes all
the site's cookies when I close the browser.

  I also get a tiny little "C" icon in the status bar which indicates
the status.  Green means allow, blue means session, red means block,
and gray means I haven't set an override for that site.  If you're a
mouse person, clicking the icon also brings up the dialog box.

  So, I can control my cookies easily, but I'm not pestered constantly
about sites setting cookies, and I don't have to wade through several
layers of UI to add exceptions.

  Highly recommended.

-- Ben



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