Session cookies are not visible
Hello, when I'm logged in a website I would expect to see some kind of cookie from this website (session cookies) when I click in the list of cookies somewhere in the Security & Privacy options.
This seems to be not possible any more. This is for me very confusing because there are times when one is interested in navigating a website anonymously and I cannot be sure if I'm logged in or not.
Why is this? I think in previous versions sessions cookies were visible?
All Replies (7)
Hello Mayoneso,
Would you please take a look at these articles :
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Storage_Inspector
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Cookies
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/cookie
Thanks for the links McCoy.
Anyway I'm not familiar with web protocols. That's why I use Firefox, because I expect to hide the complexity of web protocols and defend my privacy for me, without having to understand web protocols or installing addional add-ons.
It's good that they introduced the privacy profiles in recent versions (Standard, Strict and Custom).
But it would be nice if in future versions of Firefox the introduced a kind of Privacy wizard to let users set their privacy level without having to navigate the different options in the settings. Every time I have to reset Firefox or install it in a new device I don't remember the settings that I used in previous installations, or these options have even changed the place or the name.
They started to make this complicated when the removed the Shift+Ctrl+Del keystroke which deleted all browsing history, cookies... from websites. Since them, I don't feel in control of my privacy with Firefox anymore. I have to trust them.
"Shift+Ctrl+Del" is still supported and this item is currently found in the History menu.
- you can tap the Alt key or press the F10 key to show the hidden Menu Bar temporarily
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-browsing-search-download-history-firefox
Hello Cor-el,
Previously only one keystroke was needed to perform this operation. Now you need to perform several steps to get to this point.
And because I'm using the "restricted" privacy model, this option is disabled. But if it was enabled, it doesn't delete session cookies (as it happened previously) because the websites where I was logged in are still recognizing me. In the link you sent me it says it deletes cookies, but this is FALSE, or at least misguiding or it's a bug. Out of my experience it deletes only the visited websites and downloads.
Hello again Mayoneso,
Having read your reply to my first post, I think that this article is something you might be interested in :
https://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/cookies-guide/
I just found this add-on that maybe you'd like to try :
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/save-incognito-session/
Hello McCoy, thanks again for the links, but ...
First, I'm not a techie. I'm not really interested in the technical details of the cookies implementation.
Second, I don't like to install add-ons because after some time they stop working.
I'm interested in the usability of Firefox regarding privacy.
In previous versions it was possible to delete all cookies (session and others) with just one step (Ctrl+Shift+Del) without restarting Firefox.
Now you have to: 1) Go to the menu 2) Click in the Developer Tools 3) Click in the Storage Inspector 4) Expand the Cookies folder 5) Right click in the URL of the website 6) Click "Delete everything" 7) Repeat steps 5 and 6 for each of the URLs listed
And these 7 steps you have to repeat them for each of the tabs opened in Firefox (in my test I had two tabs pointing to two different websites with a session opened).
From my point of view this is a very big step back in protecting users privacy.
What is even more annoying is that after closing a tab, the website cookies of this tab are not visible any more in the storage inspector, even though they are still saved somewhere in disk or in memory.
If you open again the website of the closed tab there is no need to open again. Than means the session cookies were not destroyed after closing the tab.
I'm sure there must be some technical reason for this confusing behaviour. But if they want Firefox to have a big user base they have to make software for the people, not only for geeks.
Okulungisiwe