Today’s version of Firefox 91 adds a new site-wide cookie deletion action

Mozilla’s Firefox 91, released this morning, includes a new privacy management feature called Enhanced Cookie Clearing. The new functionality allows users to manage all cookies and locally stored data generated by a particular website, whether they are cookies marked on that site’s domain or cookies placed. of this site but belonging To a third-party domain, for example Facebook or Google.

Rely on total cookie protection

The new functionality builds on and depends on Total Cookie Protection, introduced in February with Firefox 86. Total Cookie Protection partitions cookies by the site that placed them, rather than by the domain that owns them, which means that if a third party hypothetically, we will call “Forkbook” place tracking (or authentication) cookies on both momscookies.com and grandmascookies.com, it cannot reliably link the two.

Without cookie partitioning, a single Forkbook cookie would contain site data for both momscookies.com and grandmascookies.com. With cookie partitioning, Forkbook must set two separate cookies, one for each site, and cannot necessarily be linked to each other.

Even though cookies are used for connecting to third party Forkbooks, linking the two together should be done on the back end – since both are presumably for the same Forkbook account – rather than the Forkbook being able to read simply, cheaply and easily. all tracking data from a single cookie. If the sites don’t use Forkbook for authentication, the two probably can’t be linked at all, because even if the user is signed into Forkbook in a different tab, this cookie is separate from those used on mom and them. grandma’s cookie sites.

Data erasure on the whole site

Once you understand that websites regularly place cookies that are owned by third-party domains, it becomes obvious why it can be difficult to erase all traces of data stored by this site – returning to our “Forkbook” example above. above, erasing all data belonging directly to momscookies.com would not erase the Forkbook cookie, and erasing a Universal Forkbook cookie would necessarily log the user out of all websites using Forkbook authentication.

However, when each site has its own individual cookie box, that means Forkbook has to place separate cookies, separate copies of the built-in javascript libraries, separate copies of the images, etc. momscookies.com and grandmascookies.com and forkbook.com itself, it becomes possible to easily manage all data stored locally by that individual site.

When using Total Cookie Protection, you can empty the entire compartment to momscookies.com including its own cookies, Forkbook cookies and anything else. This breaks Forkbook’s record for your browsing activities on momscookies.com– because although it will set a new cookie on your next visit, it will not have a reliable way to link this cookie to the previous cookie you deleted or to other Forkbook cookies set by other sites.

Fuhgeddaboudit

In addition to organizing the data stored locally by the website that placed it rather than the domain that owns it, Firefox 91 gives users the ability to quickly and easily delete all local traces of visits from site to site. using the History function. When browsing your own history timeline in Firefox 91, you can right-click a site entry and select Forget This Site. This removes both the history entry and all cached cookies, images, scripts, etc. defined during visits to this site.

Be strict

In order to use the new privacy management features, you must first make sure that Strict Tracking Protection is turned on. Without Strict Tracking Protection, cookies are not separated by the site that sets them in the first place.

To enable Strict Tracking Protection, click the shield to the left of the address bar and select Protection Settings. This opens up privacy and security in a new tab. From there, just make sure the radio button option for Enhanced Tracking Protection is set to Strict, not Standard.

While Firefox’s Privacy & Security dialog warns you – and precisely – that strict protection may cause some sites or content to break, such breaks have so far been few and minor in our own testing. The majority of the web, including the bits using third-party authentication and tracking, should continue to function properly.