Open Bug 1674238 Opened 4 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Firefox stores cookie settings for Google and Youtube for only a short time

Categories

(Core :: Privacy: Anti-Tracking, defect, P3)

Firefox 82
defect

Tracking

()

UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: satterdam2, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

(Whiteboard: [necko-triaged])

Attachments

(5 files)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:82.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/82.0

Steps to reproduce:

I went to google.com and youtube.com . A screen appeared where i have to set the privacy/cookie settings for the website for advertisement , tracking etc. I set the settings to decline to having the websites using cookies for tracking and advertisement. After that I agreed to the license of the websites.
I reset firefox to default settings and also reinstalled firefox. but the result is the same.

Actual results:

The settings are saved and the websites work fine for a day to a couple days. After a day to a couple days when i go to either google or youtube the pop up screens appear again where i have to set the privacy/cookie settings all over again. I own two computers and this same problem ocuurs on both computers on firefox.

Expected results:

The settings should have stayed saved in firefox and only be erased if i erase them myself.

Did you set your Firefox to remove your browsing history when you close the browser? Any other changes to the history settings?

No i didnt set firefox to remove browsing history when i close the browser. Also no other changes to history settings.

I feel that I have a similar issue related to this bug report - if it differs and I need to file a separate bug report, please let me know.

Since v82 I have had a recurring issue with Firefox deleting my YouTube cookies and what seems to be a random basis. Luckily I keep a regular backup of my Firefox profile, so i am able to restore cookies.sqlite when this happens.

Dalegica no you dont need to file a seperate bug report. You're welcome to join this one.

I'm not able to reproduce in windows 10 pro, nightly 84.0a1 (2020-11-02) (64-bit), beta 83.0b7 (64-bit) and release 82.0

Setting a component for this in order to get the dev team involved.
(If the team feels it's an incorrect one please feel free to change it to a more appropriate one.)

Best regards,
Clara

Component: Untriaged → Networking: Cookies
Product: Firefox → Core

Could you go to about:support, click the copy text to clipboard, and paste the contents here?
Also, can you clarify if the issue is that you get the cookie banner on youtube.com, or on videos embedded on other websites? Are you also logged out?

Flags: needinfo?(satterdam2)
Attached file about:support
(In reply to Valentin Gosu [:valentin] (he/him) from comment #6)
> Could you go to about:support, click the copy text to clipboard, and paste the contents here?
> Also, can you clarify if the issue is that you get the cookie banner on youtube.com, or on videos embedded on other websites? Are you also logged out?

I'm not sure what you mean about the cookie banner on youtube.com - I do not use YouTube logged in, I always use YouTube logged out.  YouTube has always recommended videos suitable for me while logged out.  Recently I have noticed the recommended videos change completely, but the normal ones return after I restore a previous backup of cookies.sqlite.

As requested, the text from about:support:
```
Attached file about
(In reply to Valentin Gosu [:valentin] (he/him) from comment #6)
> Could you go to about:support, click the copy text to clipboard, and paste the contents here?
> Also, can you clarify if the issue is that you get the cookie banner on youtube.com, or on videos embedded on other websites? Are you also logged out?

I'm not sure what you mean about the cookie banner on youtube.com - I do not use YouTube logged in, I always use YouTube logged out.  YouTube has always recommended videos suitable for me while logged out.  Recently I have noticed the recommended videos change completely, but the normal ones return after I restore a previous backup of cookies.sqlite.

As requested, the text from about:support:
```

Apologies for the double post!

Attached file about:support

I also dont use youtube logged in. As far i know the problem only occurs on youtube and google. i dont have any problems on other sites.

Flags: needinfo?(satterdam2)

Is this the old issue that cookies bet evicted?

Baku, do you know?

Flags: needinfo?(amarchesini)

I dont understand what old issue you are talking about

Attached file about-support.txt

As with Dalegica I seem to have the same issue, if not a very very similar one. After the last update to v83 I will keep getting asked to log into my Yahoo, Google and Reddit accounts at random it seems. "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" is not checked and I've tried removing the cookies.sqllite file and letting it be rebuilt and no joy. No new plugins or anything else have recently been installed either.

Attached is my about:support if it helps in any way!

Just like alastair-h I too have also noticed being logged out of sites, such as Facebook and Google. I still sometimes lose my YouTube cookies, but not as frequently.

Can add Amazon to this list as well now, it seems to think I'm accessing it from an entirely new PC each time I access it after closing and opening the browser and will prompt me to approve the login each time. For comparisons sake, Twitch seemed to log me out initially but after logging back in it has since been fine. Twitter never logged me out. When the Youtube one goes, so does my settings and when I log in again I'll have it set as Light instead of Dark theme.

Attached image SessionCookie.png

Just another addition to this, compared the Cookie output from Amazon between FF and Chrome and the biggest culprit looks like it may be the session-token cookie which is getting set to a ridiculously small amount of time compared to the one set on Chrome. No idea if this is some new privacy setting but if it is, I don't remember tweaking anything like that. I also couldn't see the 4th session cookie (session-id-apay) in the list in Firefox.

This is still happening for me. Is there anyway to escalate this issue as I don't feel as though this issue is getting that it needs?

This issue is driving me nuts. Is mozilla working on this is issue ?

Severity: -- → S3
Priority: -- → P2
Whiteboard: [necko-triaged]

Just to confirm that this issue still has not been fixed. Will it ever be fixed?

Still not fixed

I noticed that the domains listed in this bug are part of the tracker list.

https://github.com/mozilla-services/shavar-prod-lists/blob/e9a8aee267e18f7a990505f03872e1950fbf8443/disconnect-blacklist.json#L8105
https://github.com/mozilla-services/shavar-prod-lists/blob/e9a8aee267e18f7a990505f03872e1950fbf8443/disconnect-blacklist.json#L1215

I'm thinking this is similar to bug 1672394. That was fixed, and the users still report being logged out; @Johann, do you think this is caused by the cookie purging? If so, is this the expected behaviour?

@ reporters, could you see if setting privacy.purge_trackers.enabled to false in about:config fixes the issue for you?

Severity: S3 → --
Component: Networking: Cookies → Privacy: Anti-Tracking
Flags: needinfo?(satterdam2)
Flags: needinfo?(jhofmann)
Flags: needinfo?(frutoso7)
Priority: P2 → --

I changed the setting now to false . Will see how it works out.

Flags: needinfo?(satterdam2)

btw clearing history on browser shutdown is not enabled

@Valentin - I altered the setting you suggested to FALSE and this does indeed seem to have sorted out my issues with the logins. Been trying it over the last few days and with it enabled the logins would usually expire within 24hrs at most but they've been going strong the last 3 days or so now. Thanks!

The same here . A few days now since i altered the settings and no problems so far.

Hey folks, I'm really sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for raising this bug. A few questions (in ascending order of complexity, feel free to answer this partially, that would already help):

  • What was the last Firefox version you observed this behavior on? What version are you on now?
  • Have you regularly visited the affected sites in private browsing mode?
  • Does this issue also occur when you make a new profile in about:profiles?
  • If you want to go the extra mile (I would really appreciate it), can you do the following:
  1. Set privacy.purge_trackers.enabled to true and privacy.purge_trackers.logging.level to All in about:config
  2. Go to Google or Amazon (wherever this happened for you), interact with the site a bit and log in.
  3. Open the Browser Toolbox
  4. In the console tab, run the following code:
Services.perms.getAllWithTypePrefix("storageAccess").map(e => e.principal.origin).join(", ")
  1. This will print a chunk of your browsing history to the console, so you don't have to share it here, simply search for the domains you logged into just now (or share it with me privately if you feel comfortable -> jhofmann@mozilla.com).
  2. Restart the browser
  3. Repeat steps 3-5, note whether the domain you logged into is still around
  4. Finally run the following code in the browser toolbox (this will start the thing that logs you out again, presumably):
await Components.classes["@mozilla.org/purge-tracker-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIPurgeTrackerService).purgeTrackingCookieJars()
  1. Look at the logged information and share as much as you feel comfortable, particularly around clearing whatever domain you logged into.
  2. Visit Google etc. and check if you're still logged in.

Thanks again and I'm happy to help if you have any questions.

Flags: needinfo?(satterdam2)
Flags: needinfo?(jhofmann)
Flags: needinfo?(amarchesini)
Flags: needinfo?(alastair-h)

The last version the problem occured on was 86.0.1
The current version is 87.0
I dont use private browsing
I dont use profiles

Flags: needinfo?(satterdam2)

Hi Johann,

Took me a while to get the time but anything that can sort it out!

Q. What was the last Firefox version you observed this behavior on? What version are you on now?
A: The last Firefox was v86.01 after updating the suggested config from Valentin. First noticed it was v83. Currently on v87. Oddly after switching back now the behavior appears to have gone.

Q. Have you regularly visited the affected sites in private browsing mode?
A: No, I don't use the private browsing for these sites.

Q. Does this issue also occur when you make a new profile in about:profiles?
A: Apparently not, after trying the other stuff you've suggested I set up a new profile and tried ot over the last few days, seems to be fine.

Q. If you want to go the extra mile (I would really appreciate it), can you do the following:
A: I've sent you the details of the output for these to the email specified, however much help they are! But on the face of things I can say the following -
After running the command in step 5 all the domains I had issues with were listed in the output both before and after updating the settings in step 1 and before/after the restart of the browser.

After running the command in step 8 I was logged out of Google and Youtube (including it wiping my settings for light/dark theme) and for Twitter but not for Amazon or Twitch which seemed to retain those logins. Currently the logins seem to be sticking and the behavior (even with the config setting enabled) has yet to return after about 3-4 days.

Many thanks,
Alastair

Flags: needinfo?(alastair-h)

Typical timing! Just went to Google (front page search google.co.uk) and I'm logged out of there now without actually logging out myself. Youtube and Amazon by contrast seem fine atm.

Flags: needinfo?(frutoso7)

Given that there is no update in 10 months. Setting the priority and severity to P3 and S3.

Severity: -- → S3
Priority: -- → P3
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