For privacy against tracking, I have my browser set up to refuse cookies by default. I only allow cookies from whitelisted domains. In general, this works OK for me. However, I now have at least one case where it has become inconvenient. I pay for a digital subscription to the Washington Post, because I like their journalism and want to support it, but I do not want them or their advertisers tracking me, so I never log in and don't accept cookies from them. This has worked fine until recently. Within the last few days, they have done something new on their web site with the result that although I can view their home page, if I click through to a story, I get this message in firefox:
Is there any good strategy for this type of situation that preserves my privacy? For example, I thought about writing a script that would run every 10 seconds on my machine and delete all cookies except those from whitelisted domains.
Automatically Delete Cookies In Firefox Excluding Whitelisted Websites
Download File: https://urlcod.com/2vFMGE
This is just one possible answer to my own question, and probably not the optimal one, but I thought it was worth describing. I tried out the idea of a script to delete cookies that aren't on a whitelist. Below is a ruby script for use with firefox that I came up with. I tested it in linux, but it's probably usable in a cross-platform way (maybe slashes in the file path need to be changed for Windows?).
It appears that although I can immediately delete the cookies from the sqlite file they're stored in, firefox uses its own in-memory copy of the cookies. Therefore the deletion of the cookies doesn't actually take effect until I restart firefox.
Browser cookies can be useful but are often abused to track your online activity across the web. In this guide you'll learn how to install Cookie AutoDelete, a web-browser add-on that automatically deletes unused cookies.
The extension disables automatic cleanup by default. To enable it, click the icon (Fig. 4) and then click on Auto-clean disabled. That way, you don't have to remember to manually clean your cookies: when you close a browser tab, any cookies no longer in use are automatically deleted. This is a double edged swords: this means that all tracking cookies will be deleted but also means you will be logged out of any session you currently had open. Enabling this option is equivalent to "starting anew" every time you open your browser (although you can keep your tabs open, you won't be logged in anywhere apart from the website you whitelisted).
You can seamlessly mix all types of shortcuts on the Universal Launcher. The apps started by the launcher will be whitelisted in Kiosk Mode automatically. For websites please use the URL Whitelist/Blacklist options if you need some filtering. 2ff7e9595c
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