cookie monster

Recently I was testing a web application and needed to manually delete some cookies it had been setting.
It occurred to me how many cookies my browser was actually keeping track of, and how few of those where actually related to sites I frequently visit.
For a lot of those cookies I could guess their purpose by the name of the URL they where created from, but there where still a shit load of em in there that I didn’t have a clue what they where used for, and who they where from.

Call me paranoid, but somehow I don’t like the idea that some unknown people are keeping electronic taps on me. So clearing all your cookies now and then is one solution, but this also means that all your favourite websites will suddenly have completely forgotten who you are, and will require you to login again. And if you’re in anyway a bit like my you’re probably using different passwords for different sites, and you’ll be forgetting some of those meaning you’ll be hitting that “damn I forgot my password again and now feel like an idiot” button so they can help you out over e-mail.

But luckily there is another way to deal with this issue in Mozilla Firefox. This browser allows you to restrict how cookies are managed, and currently I only allow cookies to remain during a single session, unless the website setting the cookie is in my exception list.
In that exception list I’ll be only putting those sites I want cookies from, which will only be those yummy crunchy ones with raisins.

Like this I’ll be able to logon to my favourite sites without having to re-enter my account details a zillion times, and all other nasty, bad tasting biscuits will be zapped from my hard drive as soon as I exit my browser.
Sweeeeet :)