It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say researchers

Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by Pxtl on Monday July 31, 2017 @10:49AM (#14892471)

Because Firefox no longer has the market share it once did and is not in a position to drive web standards like IE, Chrome, and Safari. If Apple decided to kill cookies for secondary requests, they would be dead just like Flash died.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by falcolas on Monday July 31, 2017 @10:51AM (#14892487)

Because these are the first party web browsers associated with the two most popular OSes - he didn't mention Chrome either.

Firefox and Chrome doing the right thing won't help a large majority of non-technical users of the internet.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by Pxtl on Monday July 31, 2017 @10:57AM (#14892564)

I didn't mention Chrome because Google is an advertising company that benefits from cookie tracking and so I expect them to look out for their own interests.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by catamorphismic on Monday July 31, 2017 @09:00AM (#14891482)

*but not

Can't edit from my mobile HN client.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by kuschku on Monday July 31, 2017 @09:00AM (#14891483)

Because Firefox already has implemented this.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by gcp on Monday July 31, 2017 @09:29AM (#14891717)

Custom settings for history -> Accept third party cookies (Always/Never/From visited).

in case anyone is wondering.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by 0xffff2 on Monday July 31, 2017 @10:45AM (#14892439)

Chrome, IE, and Safari all have options to disable third party cookies as well. This has been a standard browser option for decades.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by kuschku on Monday July 31, 2017 @05:15PM (#14895954)

No, this is different. Firefox has an option to encapsulate third-party cookies by origin page.

So, depending on if you click on a facebook like button on A.com or B.com, facebook sees two entirely separate browsers.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by 0xffff2 on Monday July 31, 2017 @06:08PM (#14896317)

This really isn't my area of expertise. Can you provide a link to what you're talking about? AFAIK, if you have third-party cookies set to "never", Facebook sees exactly the same (lack of) cookies no matter where I click on a like button outside of Facebook.com itself. So, if Firefox does what you say, I still don't see what it has to do with the third-party cookie option gcp pointed to.

Also, in trying to figure out exactly what feature you're talking about, I've come across quite a lot of sources that suggest that Safari has similar or more strict default settings than Firefox regarding third-party cookies.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by kuschku on Monday July 31, 2017 @07:10PM (#14896659)

It's part of the container tabs concept, but automatically putting each first-level origin (what you see in the URL bar) into its own container. This is atm only an about:config option in Nightly.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by Pxtl on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @06:31PM (#14906070)

So how do you use this with systems that need it - can you log into the site for this "container"? Or would it leave the container when you go to the sign-in page? Like if I'm using Google or Facebook for single-sign-on, or I want to comment on a Disqus thread below a news article - since it's in its own container, I'm not logged in on this other site, but if I click a link to log in and it takes me away from this site, it takes me away from this container.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by kuschku on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @07:44PM (#14906568)

That's actually an interesting issue I had with it, in some versions that actually didn't work. But, somehow, now it does, and I don't know why (haven't read up on it yet).

TL;DR: Can't tell you how, but it somehow works.

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Re:It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say resear... by dannysu on Monday July 31, 2017 @10:43AM (#14892415)

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cook...

Link with pictures if anyone can't find it.

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