If Mozilla wants to make a real difference, they'd study uMatrix and figure out how to create UX that would give that degree of flexibility and power to non-technical users.
I don't know if I'm an outlier, but I hate having to resign back into sites I use even semi-regularly unless its for administrative access or purchase confirmation. Regular "auto sign outs" already happens with a few due to a snafu somewhere along the stack, for me The Economist and Foreign Affairs are the major ones where it seems like every time I go back to visit I'm signed out. In contrast sites like HN or Ars seem to never sign me out (or maybe once every few years) and some of the newspapers are once or twice a year. Being signed out creates more friction then I'd have thought before experiencing it often, perhaps amplified since I tend to read on the model of "see a few of interesting stories, open them all in tabs, then go through them" and if signed out I not only need to sign in but every single tab will be "you've reached your article limit please sign in".
I have suspicions about how much it even matters when it comes to tracking for any site I'm actually paying for. I mean, by definition they know who I am, real money is changing hands after all. Within their own site there is no technical measure that can prevent them from seeing what remote resources of theirs I specifically am calling for, it's their resources after all with authentication required. And once they have the info what would prevent them sharing/selling it would be their own interests and the law, not anything from my end. Clearing 1st party cookies smells suspiciously like privacy theater for any site at all that depends on authentication in any significant way.
Having set up a master password in Firefox, resigning usually takes me a single click (as the login info is filled in by the browser). Would this be useful in your case?
- IE prompts me if I want to block cookies on a website, so unless I trust it, I block by default.
- I have an extension on Firefox that is "Cookie Autodelete", so I visit a site and unless I whitelist it, all cookies will be deleted when I leave.
I wondering if you are not seeing blocked cookie because of the second one. I'm not blocking it, but as soon as I leave it gets deleted, effectively doing the same thing.
Is there anything in umatrix to make the switch worthwhile?
For the ones that don't work it's normally 1 or 2 clicks in the UI to allow some 3rd parties and save it.
Sometimes a site works by default in the "broken" state but as soon as I give it more permissions it breaks by adding a paywall or some modal window.
uMatrix is like linux: it requires more work upfront but give you more control and customization options.
That's a lot of configuration to do. I'd rather just use Firefox containers, noscript, and use Tor for things I don't want tied to my ad profile.
It's not a lot of config at all. If the site breaks, you click a button and unblock some stuff. Otherwise the defaults work great.
So this change should have no effect on you right? You're blocking all cookies? I like that idea, but how many things does it break?
I don't see it too often, but occasionally I do run across a site that won't load at all without cookies enabled. For these circumstances, I use Containers and Cookie AutoDelete.
The only situations where I tend to have problems are those where I have a third-party payment window that opens in a new tab. It sometimes takes some fiddling with the settings to make it work properly.
Almost nothing, surprisingly enough. Of course it breaks websites I sign into, so I simply whitelist those.