At work I am forced to use Internet Explorer, and by using it I found a surprisingly useful feature: I can not only clock all third party cookies, but it prompts me as to whether I want a first party to store any cookies. The prompt allow allows me to automatically blacklist a site from providing me any cookies. I really enjoy this, as if I know there is a site I will never log into, I can permanently blacklist it with one click. I tried to see if I can do the same but I did not find this feature on Firefox.<p>I have also noted that certain sites will be very user hostile if you do this. Reddit will load the site and actually overlay a white screen to make it appear like it never loads if you block its cookies.
What's the best way to circumvent this? Is it even possible?<p>I'm no expert (which is why I ask), but I assume that blocking third-party cookies in your browser won't prevent situations like the <i>tracker</i> example the author provides.<p>That is, since you visited <i>tracker</i> at least once, their cookie would have been set during that visit as a first-party cookie, and therefore the http requests to retrieve the 1x1 transparent image from their server will contain the data they're after, right?
I vaguely remember using a Firefox extension a long time ago that allowed one to whitelist / sticky a handful of domains that would be spared from the usual "delete every cookie", giving the user a renewed sense of control over what the web knows about them.<p>Nowadays with online fingerprinting¹ this may amount to nothing more than placebo, but I do miss it.<p>__________<p>1. <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/now-sites-can-fingerprint-you-online-even-when-you-use-multiple-browsers/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/now-s...</a>
I really don't understand why this is a bad practice. I know it is horrifying to give your web history to total stranger for god knows what purposes they will use. But going extra mile to implement privacy so that no site/some sites could talk behind your back (looking at you firefox multi account containers) seems like an equally horrific act that cripples websites not ad providers.<p>When I used these kind of precautions I saw that analytics got no access and I believe most of the site-owners need these information to operate/develop their sites and it seems like a lot of work to implement those in-site tracking features yourself. Or I started to see random ads all over the place like early 2000s, I do enjoy targeted ads because when I am looking for something those ads could help a lot, only if there is a way to stop them after I made a purchase though.<p>So, if anyone could simply explain why this is SO bad or send me to correct discussion (I do believe these matters discussed previously a lot).
So a cookie only knows the website that referred me?<p>So if I copy paste the website in the address bar, they dont learn anything about my last browsing habit?
This revelation should be front page on every newspaper. That IT companies have been hiding these things inside our computers is a violation of our privacy, even our property rights. How muck electricity has been used by these things, electricity I pay for. Either Google needs to reimburse me for hosting their "cookies" or we need to ban cookies altogether.<p><a href="https://torproject.org/" rel="nofollow">https://torproject.org/</a>