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Firefox's unstoppable zombie Google cookie

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  1. Fibbles

    Firefox's unstoppable zombie Google cookie

    Earlier in the week there was a topic about DNT. The comments for which strayed onto tracking cookies. This got me looking at my own cookie policies.

    I've been using the Self-Destructing Cookies addon for some time now. It does a decent job of blocking 3rd party cookies and managing the few first party cookies which I want to allow. I guess relying on an addon has made me complacent, I've just assumed that through all the version upgrades everything was still working the way I'd originally set it up.

    Skip forward to this week when I reviewed my cookie policies. I went into Firefox's preferences and clicked the 'remove individual cookies' option on the 'Privacy' tab so I could see exactly what was there. To my surprise there was a Google PREF cookie. The addon I use shouldn't be allowing any cookies from Google, but I thought to myself "maybe it's a bug" and deleted it manually.

    I closed the 'remove individual cookies' window and the reopened it only to find the Google cookie had reappeared. I didn't have a Google page open so where did it come from?

    I've tried:

    - Disabling all addons (incase one of them was doing it by stealth).

    - Removing Google from the search box.

    - Turning off the 'Block reported attack sites / web forgeries' option on the security tab to stop Firefox downloading a list via Google's safebrowsing API.

    - Going to google.com/ncr (usually I get redirected to .co.uk,) clicking the padlock in the adressbar and using this menu to manually blacklist all Google.com cookies.

    Nothing works. As soon as I delete the Google PREF cookie it comes back. The conclusion I'm coming to is that Firefox is hard coded to plant a Google PREF cookie. I'm now concerned that Firefox is not capable of protecting my privacy in the face of relentless online advertisers.

    Sidenote:

    I'm not one for conspiracies but whilst trying to look for details on this issue (and finding very few,) I found this document at the Washing Post. It seems to suggest that the NSA and GCHQ are using Google PREF cookies to track people online.

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    1. Roger B
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      Re: Firefox's unstoppable zombie Google cookie

      Just tried this myself on the works PC, only have Noscript and Adblock plus running in the extensions menu. I had have 3 copies of the Google PREF cookie though, one .uk, one.com and one ie, (I am in the UK) deleted all 3 cookie folders, shut Firefox down, restarted and they were gone. My Noscript does block all Google stuff though, even on this page google-analytics and googletagservices are trying to load, so if you have a Google service running, that might be why it reappears for you?

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  2. Fibbles

    The cookie reappears when I have no pages open at all so I'm not sure what Google service could possibly be running. I do use ABP but I haven't used NoScript in a couple of years mainly because I found blocking everything to be more hassle than it was worth. Still, I'll give it a try tomorrow and report back.

    Even if NoScript does block it, I'm still extremely annoyed that Firefox will accept google.com cookies when I have explicitly told it not to.

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  3. Fibbles

    I'd forgotten about this thread. Anyway, NoScript does not block the Google PREF cookie, in fact as far as I can see NoScript has no cookie blocking capabilities whatsoever. I did eventually find a solution after hours of searching. To be honest the method seems utterly bizarre but it has actually stopped the cookie from reappearing.

    [Source]

    (1) Open Firefox / Preferences / Content / Languages / Choose to open the list of languages.

    (2) Select each language in the list. Remove each language from the list including English/United States [en-us]. Remove them all. Click OK

    (3) Open Firefox / Preferences / Security. Uncheck Block reported attack sites. Uncheck Block reported web forgeries.

    (4) Open Firefox / Preferences / Privacy / Exceptions to open the Exceptions – Cookies list. Enter google.com and click Block. Close the Exceptions – Cookies window.

    (5) Open Firefox / Preferences / Privacy / Show Cookies to open the Cookies list. Remove all google.com cookies including the google PREF cookie. Close the Cookies list window.

    (6) No google.com cookies or google PREF cookie will install in your browser again.

    (7) You can return to Firefox / Preferences / Content / Languages / Choose / Select a language to add... and add as many languages as you want to add to the language list, but now the google PREF cookie will not install because you previously unchecked the / Security options as in the preceding paragraph (3) and you blocked google.com cookies as in the preceding paragraph (4).

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