290922 - Preference to delete cookies when Firefox is closed does not delete certain cookies

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[4w29q8c02]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050415 Firefox/1.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050415 Firefox/1.0.3

In the current version of Firefox, some cookies persist even when the preference
is set to delete all cookies when the browser is closed.  Specifically,
yahoo.com and ib.forum77.com cookies remained after multiple closures of the
browser and persisted even after the computer was shut down and restarted.  The
cookies had to be deleted manually.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set preference to delete all cookies when the browser is closed
2. Visit www.yahoo.com or ib.forum77.com
3. Close and restart the browser

Actual Results:  
All cookies were deleted properly except for the ones from the two sites
mentioned above.

Expected Results:  
All cookies should have been deleted when the browser was closed.

AdBlock v5 d2 nightly 39 is installed and blocks some ad content from yahoo.com
but is not set to block any content from ib.forum77.com

Comment 1

[4w29q8c02]

Additional details: the bug only occurs if the user logs into the sites in
question, not if one merely visits the sites.

Comment 2

[4w29q8c02]

New information: My original description was somewhat inaccurate.  I have now
determined that the problem only occurs with cookies that were imported from
Internet Explorer during a clean reinstall of the Firefox profile.  All cookies
that are imported remain as persistent cookies, regardless of the Firefox
preference, until the cookies are manually deleted.  This occured with clean
profile reinstalls with Firefox 1.0.3 and 1.0.4.  No other cookies are affected
by this bug as far as I can determine.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Hmm, the cookie backend sets the expiry date when the cookie is set, and session
cookies are not written to disk and thus cleared on exit.

This is also true for cookies set before the preference is changed, not just
imported.  Or are you saying you imported the IE cookies after you changed the
pref?  If the cookies are getting nuked at the end of the session, why import?

This is more of a backend question...

Comment 4

[4w29q8c02]

Reply to #3:

When creating a new profile, I import settings from IE, which includes cookies.
 If I have cookies left in IE that I have not yet cleared, they are imported
into Firefox along with bookmarks, etc.  Then I restore my original Firefox
prefs by replacing prefs.js and user.js, but Firefox ignores the "new"
preference and treats the cookies as persistent.  Since the problem can be
solved easily by manually clearing cookies, I consider it minor, but this cookie
behavior could have privacy implications, especially if tracking cookies were
imported by mistake.

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.

Comment 7

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs,
filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change