Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Firefox 56.0.2 does not block or detect third-party cookies, regardless of privacy settings

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by WillW

WillW
WillW
more options

This is the same problem as another user reported with Firefox 55 two months ago, which was never responded to: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1174598

I am making a new post with more detail in the hope of getting a response, because this is not a minor problem.

My cookie settings in Firefox have always been set to never allow third-party cookies. When clicking on "Show Cookies" in the privacy menu, that setting appears to be working. However, when running the most recent version of CCleaner today (5.36.6278 x64), there were hundreds of third-party cookies listed for Firefox, placed by every website I have visited since I last used CCleaner many months ago.

I cleaned all the cookies out with CCleaner, then started Firefox again, visited a couple of news sites, then closed Firefox and re-ran CCleaner. Again, CCleaner showed a few third-party cookies present even though Firefox is still set to never allow them and they are not listed in "Show Cookies."

So Firefox's cookie handling appears to be broken for a long time now. If this is just some bug with CCleaner then that would be a relief, but that doesn't seem likely. I hope this would be a priority fix.

I am using Firefox 56.0.2 x64 on Windows 7. I do not have any cookie-related extensions enabled, although I do have the Ghostery extension running.


EDIT: To confirm that no extension was causing this problem, I restarted Firefox in safe mode with everything disabled (but with third-party cookies still set to "Never Allow"), and then visited a few websites - theguardian.com, youtube.com, etc. When I re-ran CCleaner, there were dozens of third-party cookies detected, so it's not a Firefox extension that could be causing this problem.

This is the same problem as another user reported with Firefox 55 two months ago, which was never responded to: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1174598 I am making a new post with more detail in the hope of getting a response, because this is not a minor problem. My cookie settings in Firefox have always been set to never allow third-party cookies. When clicking on "Show Cookies" in the privacy menu, that setting appears to be working. However, when running the most recent version of CCleaner today (5.36.6278 x64), there were hundreds of third-party cookies listed for Firefox, placed by every website I have visited since I last used CCleaner many months ago. I cleaned all the cookies out with CCleaner, then started Firefox again, visited a couple of news sites, then closed Firefox and re-ran CCleaner. Again, CCleaner showed a few third-party cookies present even though Firefox is still set to never allow them and they are not listed in "Show Cookies." So Firefox's cookie handling appears to be broken for a long time now. If this is just some bug with CCleaner then that would be a relief, but that doesn't seem likely. I hope this would be a priority fix. I am using Firefox 56.0.2 x64 on Windows 7. I do not have any cookie-related extensions enabled, although I do have the Ghostery extension running. EDIT: To confirm that no extension was causing this problem, I restarted Firefox in safe mode with everything disabled (but with third-party cookies still set to "Never Allow"), and then visited a few websites - theguardian.com, youtube.com, etc. When I re-ran CCleaner, there were dozens of third-party cookies detected, so it's not a Firefox extension that could be causing this problem.

Modified by WillW

All Replies (2)

Shadow110
Shadow110
more options

This is all fine and interesting but nothing I can do about it. Is the reason ignored. Your not in the right place We are Volunteer Support...

Try some where else, google to you get it right. Also note how to do a bug report. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/QA/Bug_writing_guidelines

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

WillW
WillW Question owner
more options

Google isn't any help since this bug has apparently gone unnoticed so far. I will try submitting a bug report, although I am not hopeful that will be noticed either since reproducing the bug requires the use of third-party software.

It's a little frustrating since this seems like a very serious problem with Firefox - I expect most users have expected the browser to be blocking third-party cookies all this time.