591907 - third party cookies enabled by default, impossile to uncheck by default

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Security, defect)

Description

[Samuël]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; nl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; nl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8

When check accept cookies from websites, accept cookies from third parties is checked by default.
Peoples should be able to decide for themselves if they want to accept third party cookies or not, instead it is checked by default.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Firefox > Preferences > Privacy
2.Check accept cookies from websites
3.See what happens to cookies from third parties
Actual Results:  
Third party cookies checked by default

Expected Results:  
Accept third party cookies should stay unchecked

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

This was WONTFIX'ed in bug 324397 (see also bug 417800), mostly because some sites depend on it (and users wouldn't realize why some sites stop working).

Besides .. advertisers have learned how to work around it, using iframes, redirects, behind-the-scenes-communication, etc... The flag is basically useless in the current web, it gives a false impression that it can protect your privacy. At one moment, it was even hidden from the UI (and it's still difficult to find).

I'm not sure where the current bug is, the latest comments are in bug 324397

Comment 2

[cprise]

"some sites depend on it"

Yes, the browser makers have let the cat out of the bag with that one. The way it should have been would be to treat anything from outside the domain in the address bar as suspicious. Browsers should have asked the user if they want to "trust 3rd party content referenced from this site". Then people could have made the few exceptions they needed while answering 'No' on non-essential sites.

The Internet community needs to find a way to reduce the expectation by web hosts that users will load or run anything they casually reference offsite.

Comment 3

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Why need-info me?  I know very little about cookies.

Comment 4

[Virginia (please send need info request to Brindusa Tot)]

Hi,

I'm tried to reproduce this issue but it seems the options on the Preferences menu have changed and the test case is no longer valid. It seems the issue corresponds to an old functionality, for this reason, I'll close this issue as Resolved - Incomplete.
Please feel free to reopen in case the issue is still valid, and share the steps to reproduce it.

Regards,
Virginia