Let's Talk about Cookies

(Ramona, forgive me for posting this elsewhere. I wanted the largest number of responses possible to see if I could make sense of my confusion.)

Here's my confusion/dilemma/whatever:

Some cookies are beneficial and some are little more than spyware/malware. While we want to retain the good cookies (i.e. the cookie for logging in to Sillydog), we don't want to keep the Double Click-type. Besides tracking us, cookies (as they accumulate) can also drag down the speed of our computers. So... what to do?

With Firefox we have a great cookie manager which allows us to do two important things:

- delete all cookies when Firefox is closed
- retain cookies that we mark as exceptions (thereby keeping the good ones)

As far as I can tell, neither NS 8 nor Mozilla has this option of marking excpetions. If we configure either of these browser to dump the cookies and clear our tracks, we're faced with having to reset our good cookies only to lose them after that surfing session.

What am I missing here, folks?????
:?

 

James,

In Netscape 8 Site Control settings, you have a little room to select trusted and untrusted sites, and to accept cookies only from the originating site. Then last resort is to manually edit your cookies, which I do when I log off for the day... Hopefully this will be added later. On the Netscape Browser Review Forum, there is Wish List Forum, and you might add the Cookie issue.

I'll let other users address the Mozilla issue, as I rarely use Mozilla, since becoming addicted to Fx.

Ramona

 

Hi Ramona

Thanks for posting. This answer (which was suggested elsewhere) raises another question. "If" I visit a site and use the option to select it as a trusted site, NS 8 will switch over to IE. But I don't want to use IE. I'm assuming it is impossible to indicate that a site is "trusted" but use Firefox on that trusted site...right?

 

James,

I think I may have found a way around the cookie problem. As an example, insert the link for Windows BBS in the "My Settings" Filter field in the Site Controls: http://www.windowsbbs.com/index.php?s= Then make the selection that you prefer: Trust, Don't trust, etc. In the right panel of the Web Features, you are then given the option of selecting whether or not to accept cookies from this site. Play around with this feature and see what you come up with.

Sorry that I hadn't read your other suggestions, and gave you nothing new...

Ramona

 

Hi Ramona

Okay. I'm going to go to all my favorites and do exactly as you've suggested. However... one question remains: Do I then set Keep Cookies to Expire When I Close Netscape (so that any sites I do NOT set in the manner you suggested will have its cookies dumped?

 

Well.... gulp... that was half an hour wasted. *sigh*

Not your fault, Ramona. I guess I misunderstood. Anyway, what I did was to go through all of my favorites and inserted them into the "My Settings" Filter field in the Site Controls. Then since I wanted all other cookies to be automatically dumped once I logged off Netscape so that I wouldn't have to manually go through and cull all the junk, I set my cookies to expire once I exited Netscape. I wrongly assumed that those I had placed under the filter would be somehow protected as in the exceptions for Firefox. They weren't. In fact, all were wiped out.

Oh well. I've also the complaint that Ad-block is not available and now I have to contend with a lot of banner ads and so forth. NS 8 was a great dream but for me (and I speak only for me) it just does not match Firefox. I'm returning to Firefox where I have all I could possibly want. I'll retain NS 8 but only in hopes that some day extensions will be written to address these issues.

Thanks, Ramona.

 

James,

When I tried it, I used Google, which was already in the list. First I went into the Privacy setting and deleted the Google cookies.

Then I went back to the Site Controls, Highlight Google, and clicked on "I'm not sure ", and disabled the "Allow cookies ". I left the Cookie setting at "Keep Cookies until they Expire ".

Next I went to Google and made several searches, closing and reopening Google between searches. Closed Netscape, reopened, and there were NO Google cookies, and all other cookies were intact.

Ramona

 

Hi Ramona

I'm not sure I really followed your steps or the reasons for some of them. For instance: why did you set your cookies to: Keep until they expire? This in particular confuses me. I'm probably confused because I thought your workaround had found a way to make NS's cookie management conform to Firefox's.

With Firefox (I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know), I like to set the cookies to expire when I exit. That way ALL the cookies (EXCEPT for those I've marked as exceptions) are gotten rid of automatically.

With NS, while it does not have his built-in management, you've pointed out this possible workaround. BUT if we keep the cookies until they expire, I'm not sure we've really accomplished anything. We'd still have to go into the cookies and weed out those we don't want since they're all kept...right?

 

You can also change the behavior of Netscape' Trust Controls.

If you click the Security Center Icon, the full controls come up. You can tell Netscape which browser to use as default for each of the Trust catagories. For example, if you want Trusted Sites to open with Firefox you would set the default behavior to "I'm not sure." I'm not sure=Firefox rendering.

This is done by default if, when installing Netscape, you uncheck "Automatically use Internet Explorer rendering. "

 

James,

I keep cookies until they expire, because I don't have to log in to BBS, etc., every time I log on the Internet. I also edit them manually because it makes me feel safer... Altho I suppose your way is the safest. Just the way I've always done it, and what I've become accustomed to doing... Actually, if you do select to delete cookies on exit, then the Site Controls won't work for you, as far as keeping selected site's cookies. Only works if you opt to keep cookies until they expire. Apologies for confusing you!

Ramona

 

Ramona,

Me too. I don't mind some stuff in the cache and most cookies, but after I've gone to a bunch of places I searched for (like searching for info on products, shopping) or know that I've been where I know that kind of site will leave all sorts of "helpful" advertising cookies, I clear the cache and manually delete the tons of cookies they leave. A Spybot Search and Destroy run usually follows. And, if I've been bad, McAfee VirusScan will be sent into a scan as well.

But for most browsing sessions I just leave the stuff there. And I certainly try to remember which sites I've assigned to "remember" me so I don't delete those.