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Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

Self destructing cookies will mostly defeat these problems unless trackers get clever about cross-correlating cookies from different sessions. Restricting JavaScript makes that even harder for them to accomplish.

For most purposes there's little benefit to keeping old cookies hanging around. Just whitelist the sites you want to stay logged in to.

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That has been my strategy lately, but it keeps getting more annoying because of all those cookie banners that now can’t remember to not show up – quite absurd and probably not intended by regulators.

There is an extension called "I don't care about cookies" [1] that takes care of those.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...

Or, if you already use ublock origin there is a blacklist in the setting that you can turn on to block all cookie banners.

Someone should make a GDPR notice blocker.

Edit, Haha, sibling comment links to it. Absurdity.

> Self destructing cookies

Is that what Safari has? Do any other browsers have plans for this? Or stated plans to NOT do this? I imagine Chrome falls in the latter camp.

It’s a Firefox extension.

Haven’t almost all browsers always had this feature in the form of “keep until browser is closed” or “delete local data after closing the browser”? At least Firefox and Chrome have it hidden somewhere in the settings.

When was the last time you closed your browser?

On a desktop, every time I wonder why I am running out of RAM or why my CPU is max-ed up.

Do you close all the tabs that could have tracking elements? If not, session restore preserves the cookies.

I set the browser to flush all site data every time it closes.

I use an extension called the Great Suspender. It auto suspends pages on unused tabs. I REALLY like it.

Ich close it every few hours.

right, right! forgot about that since (as sibling post says) I never close my browser. and since deleting all cookies on browser close is super aggressive and painful.

i'm referring to the latest safari which tracks 3rd-party cookies and deletes them automatically after 24 hours if you've never sent that cookie as a 1st-party one. thus effectively eliminating tracking, yet allowing sites to work normally without having to temporarily enable various trackers or determine which ones are "safe".

at the same time, google/chrome said they are taking a different approach which still allows tracking. i'm not sure that they said they would NOT CONSIDER implementing a feature like safari's though.

> unless trackers get clever about cross-correlating cookies from different sessions.

I thought some of them were already doing that by using HSTS flag as a super cookie. (but safari implemented a defense)

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