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Comment by rlpb | Hacker News Reader

I would like to be able to configure my browser to open every URL in a domain-specific "container", unless I say otherwise.

Say site www.a.org includes an image from www.evilcorp.org, and www.evilcorp.org sets a cookie. When I then go to www.b.org and it includes an image from www.evilcorp.org, I don't expect the cookie to be sent back.

In other words, the cookie should be tied to www.a.org, even though it actually came from www.evilcorp.org. It should only be sent if my URL bar says www.a.org AND the image is coming from www.evilcorp.org.

I feel that this is how browsers should have been designed in the first place. I welcome this Container Tabs feature, but I don't think it quite goes far enough to restore my privacy.

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Firefox is integrating a cookie feature from Tor called first-party isolation or double-key cookies. It will separate third-party cookies for each first-party site, so evilcorp.org cookies for evilcorp.org images on a.org will not be set for evilcorp.org images on a.org. Blocking third-party cookies can break some site that rely on third-party resources, but first-party isolation should allow each site to work without cookie "crosstalk".

You can test first-party isolation now by flipping the about:config pref "privacy.firstparty.isolate" to true. Beware that there are still bugs that break some sites, which is why the feature is not enabled by default yet. If you find bugs, please report them in Bugzilla! Here is the Firefox bug tracking the integration and known bugs:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1299996

best thing that happened to mozilla was losing the money from google. yahoo pays them almost the same and does not meddle on anti tracking features.

note how every single privacy feature came after google-money. during google-money what did we got? third party cookies accepted as default.

good riddance, google.

I'd love to know how those corporate conversations go exactly. Is it so blatant as saying "no you won't work on these anti tracking features?" Or is it more "this will be so you focus on" which conveniently excludes undesirable stuff?

This. And, what is really Google paying them for? Ensuring that there is no mainstream browser left that would complicate things for ad/tracking sponsored web (and so never creating an incentive + ecosystem for any alternative)?

Could you provide some examples? That's a serious allegation.

I remember, as a volunteer, debating some privacy issue with a Google dev in Bugzilla. They made some crack about looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the discussion was out in the open. I don't recall evidence that Google was influencing Firefox improperly, but OTOH absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ...

I doubt people on the trenches were blatantly in on it. But I gave my views on the outcome. Investigate that and see the pattern.

Well, that's a cute line of defense, but pretty obvious if hand-waving if you ask me. "You're too low on the ladder to know what I'm talking about."

You're the one who accuses Mozilla and Google, of different things, sure, but fairly important things anyway.

The burden of proof lies with you. Not us. It is not up to us to "find the pattern."

Not that I disagree with you on the fact that Mozilla seems much better off, post-Google.

I think the more likely explanation is that Google withdrew* once it became clear that Chrome was far more popular. This same event led Mozilla to do some soul-searching (aka user surveys, etc.) as to why they were losing users, and what their USP was compared to Google - privacy is one of them.

* Note that "withdrew" might also mean "offered less money than before because Firefox had less users than before, and Yahoo! offering more.

He said unless I say otherwise. First-party isolation lacks customization hooks.

Ah, neat. That sounds like exactly what I want (except to be able to set a whitelist). Thanks!

For anyone else interested: now that I know what to search for, I also found some status at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/FirstPartyIsolation

so evilcorp.org cookies for evilcorp.org images on a.org will not be set for evilcorp.org images on a.org

I'm not sure this description is as clear as you intended.

oops! You are right. I meant:

... so evilcorp.org cookies for evilcorp.org images on A.org will not be set for evilcorp.org images on B.org.

Can you edit your post?

Probably not. HN only allows editing comments for a limited amount of time. In one post I found from a couple of years back, someone said that the edit window is two hours. I think perhaps also that as soon as someone has replied to a comment it will not be possible to edit that comment any longer but I'm not sure about that.

I knew I stayed with Firefox for a reason. Privacy isn't even the real issue for me: this should take a big bite out of CSRF attacks.

I'm glad Firefox is doing this, but ...

> Blocking third-party cookies can break some site that rely on third-party resources

Can anyone name sites that require them?

As someone who defaults to deny all cookies and manually enables every one my browser accepts, I don't think I've found a site that requires 3rd-party cookies. Few sites require cookies unless you login or have shopping cart.

Of course, that's anecdotal. Maybe I just don't visit certain categories of sites and don't encounter them.

I think I remember allowing them to watch Thursday Night Football on Twitter. I can't find anything about third-party cookies and tnf.twitter.com on Google though.

My university uses Piazza often as a forum, linked in through our course management site, Canvas. If you don't have 3rd party cookies, it used to just not work, but not it redirects you into opening a new tab/window for Piazza. It's still annoying and would be nice to have it right there in Canvas

I've been blocking 3rd party cookies for years. I think I've seen less than five sites break.

hbogo.com relies on third party cookies from my cable company.

The Shopify plugins from Bold use them.

StackOverflow, sadly. Their Javascript requires some off site cookies to allow for their cross domain user account stuff. Not enabling third party cookies on the StackExchange sites leads to broken pages.

Wouldn't that be the case for any site using sso?

Yes, though there are some ways around this. You could send the user to another domain to sign in using a unique request ID that identifies the user. After authenticating this unique ID can be communicated back to the first site to show the user has authenticated, and a cookie could keep the session information. That wouldn't give a seemless sign-in on every site, though - you'd need one cookie (and one sign-in) per domain.

The other way is to have all StackExchange sites be subdomains of stackexchange.com - which is how the designers of the web intended it to be, I think.

Google.

The entire notification center, cross-site hangouts chat, etc all requires third-party cookies.

Quidco.com and similar referral-promotion sites.

You'd probably like Self-Destructing Cookies[1]. It's an addon that deletes all cookies set by a page after you close the tab by default, though you can change it per-page to delete only on closing the browser or never. It doesn't prevent the cookies from being set, but it does effectively prevent tracking if you close tabs frequently.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct...

this is just like browsing in incognito mode

Not entirely, but it has it's similarities. Differences are:

* History (Personally, can't live without it). * Whitelist (HN's cookies, for example, I keep). * Saving submitted form data (for auto-complete). * 10-seconds remorse time to reopen that tab and have it stay as it is!

As someone else intimated, isn't that just disabling 3rd party cookies, which has been a browser feature for ages?

No, because when you disable 3rd party cookies, then www.evilcorp.org can't even set its cookie on www.a.org.

So, mission accomplished?

I disabled 3rd party cookies ever since the option appeared in Firefox, and never had any issues.

I disable 3rd party cookies too, but I've had several websites that have failed to work properly because of it. So now I've had to whitelist certain 3rd party cookies (e.g. accounts.google.com, payments.google.com, etc.). But since these domains are whitelisted, they can set their cookies from any website I visit. With the idea rlpb proposed, each website (and its permitted 3rd party cookies) would at least be in its own container.

If it were me, I'd like entire essentially unconnected sub-profiles, restricted by sites - different caches, potentially different extensions, etc. Even with third-party cookies disabled, you end up with little tricks to authenticate and track people across domains.

You mean like Chrome Profiles?

Firefox also has these kind of profiles, but he wrote restricted by site, so they'd have to transparently switch as you're using the browser.

Disabling 3rd party cookies breaks functionality, e.g. tweetdeck.

> I would like to be able to configure my browser to open every URL in a domain-specific "container", unless I say otherwise.

Sadly, that is currently not possible, not even with addons, because the containers can only be assigned when creating tabs, not when navigating them. There is a related feature (1st party isolation) but that is always-on, so it fails the unless I say otherwise aspect.

I have filed a bug explaining my use-cases [0], but it does not seem to be a priority at the moment. (other addon devs signalling interest might help)

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1323873

It's more difficult than one might think to specify exactly while navigating where the old page goes away and the new one starts. Especially considering things like frames.

Also if you start a new context every time you navigate you can't for instance log into Google.

Addons get the necessary information. They can distinguish top level navigation from frames. And they could easily impose rules that keep google on the same container when needed.

That's the point of having an addon API instead of fixed behavior, to implement logic around such complications.

It's actually quite a difficult problem for the browsers themselves and they have all the information that's available. There have been a lot of issues with showing the new URL while the old page is still in the browser, for instance.

Having special cases for every exception doesn't scale. What about Outlook Web Access using Microsoft accounts or domain accounts? Are you going to build an add on for every webmail installation?

I generally disable third party cookies. Causes very few problems ime.

how would you do oauth (or openid style login) with this then?

I would be happy to whitelist the sites with which I use oauth/openid to log in. If I didn't, it would still work; I'd just have to reauthenticate once for every site.

you could even just whitelist oauth/openid to work across all sites.

Nitpick: OAuth doesn't require cookies. You can track someone through the state parameter in the redirect url.

Self destructing cookies (Firefox plugin) is probably the closes you can get to that nowadays. Not really the same, but the end result is really similar.

Alternatively you can just block third-party cookies.

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