Cookie conundrum
in [UK Mac]
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From: James Taylor on 30 Jan 2010 21:11 Phil Taylor wrote: > If I do "pubsub list" on my own machine I see that Safari is subscribed > to the Washington Post A section, and goes there every 30 min to check. > I have no recollection of ever setting that up. I'd bet good money > that she has acquired a similar subscription to BBC news at some point, > which would account for the mysterious BBC cookie (if such cookies are > immune to the preferences setting) My goodness! I had no idea there was a hidden client making outbound connections without the knowledge or permission of the user. Under what circumstances do things get added to the pubsub fetch database? -- James Taylor
From: GD on 31 Jan 2010 07:31 On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:21:26 +0000, Phil Taylor wrote (in article <300120101421267783%nothere(a)all.invalid>): >> Also type "pubsub list" in a terminal window to see what RSS feeds >> various clients are going to fetch and how often. Interesting stuff. Coincidentally, I noticed the same spontaneous placing of cookies whilst I was completing my Self-assessment tax return and was about to post a question here about it. > Ah, right. I'll pass that on. Does your friend's paranoia extend to deleting Flash cookies? These seem to get accepted even if you have the 'Accept no cookies' option turned on, at least in Safari and Firefox. Worse yet, if they get placed in one browser, they are available to others. Sneaky bastards. George -- My email address is geod99 (at) googlemail dot com You know what to do
From: Phil Taylor on 31 Jan 2010 19:08 In article <7sk774F4g0U1(a)mid.individual.net>, James Taylor <usenet(a)oakseed.demon.co.uk.invalid> wrote: > Phil Taylor wrote: > > > If I do "pubsub list" on my own machine I see that Safari is subscribed > > to the Washington Post A section, and goes there every 30 min to check. > > I have no recollection of ever setting that up. I'd bet good money > > that she has acquired a similar subscription to BBC news at some point, > > which would account for the mysterious BBC cookie (if such cookies are > > immune to the preferences setting) > > My goodness! I had no idea there was a hidden client making outbound > connections without the knowledge or permission of the user. Under what > circumstances do things get added to the pubsub fetch database? Fascinating isn't it? I suspect that you get such subscriptions by inadvertently clicking the RSS button on a web site. Since nothing visible happens, you forget about it. I got rid of it by opening Safari, Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks, clicking All RSS Feeds in the left panel, then dragging the bookmark to the trash. My friend had four such subscriptions running, one of which was indeed to the BBC News. However, none of these appeared in Safari when she tried the above method. Three of them she could delete using pubsub in Terminal, but one simply reported "URL not found" and remained stubbornly in the pubsub list. Eventually she just set the time interval to "never" in Safari. She's still worrying about the Google.com cookie though, especially after having read this: http://www.google-watch.org/cgi-bin/cookie.htm Phil Taylor
From: Phil Taylor on 31 Jan 2010 19:14 In article <0001HW.C78B28BF000BA869B01029BF(a)nntp.dsl.pipex.com>, GD <real.email(a)signature.below> wrote: > On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:21:26 +0000, Phil Taylor wrote > (in article <300120101421267783%nothere(a)all.invalid>): > > >> Also type "pubsub list" in a terminal window to see what RSS feeds > >> various clients are going to fetch and how often. > > Interesting stuff. Coincidentally, I noticed the same spontaneous > placing of cookies whilst I was completing my Self-assessment tax > return and was about to post a question here about it. > > > Ah, right. I'll pass that on. > > Does your friend's paranoia extend to deleting Flash cookies? These > seem to get accepted even if you have the 'Accept no cookies' option > turned on, at least in Safari and Firefox. Worse yet, if they get > placed in one browser, they are available to others. Unless you use iCab and tell it to use local cookie storage. It seems to be the only browser which has this option. Phil Taylor
From: James Taylor on 31 Jan 2010 21:02
Phil Taylor wrote: > GD wrote: > >> Does your friend's paranoia extend to deleting Flash cookies? These >> seem to get accepted even if you have the 'Accept no cookies' option >> turned on, at least in Safari and Firefox. Worse yet, if they get >> placed in one browser, they are available to others. > > Unless you use iCab and tell it to use local cookie storage. It seems > to be the only browser which has this option. Or there's Firefox with the BetterPrivacy extension: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623> -- James Taylor |