Firefox Cookies Option Unchecks Itself on Fedora 7 or FC6
 

To Anyone Willing To Help:

I'm currently running Fedora 7 (2.6.21) on an Intel-based laptop (i686) with Firefox 2.0.0.4. I'm having an issue where, in the Preferences dialog in Firefox, I have to constantly re-check the "Accept cookies from sites" checkbox in order to log in to pages on the web (including this one), because it randomly (or, seemingly random) unchecks itself. I haven't heard of anyone else having this problem before (maybe once, but with no solution). It is very annoying to keep re-checking the box everytime I want to login somewhere, or having to re-login when the box unchecks itself and I lose the session cookies for certain sites. This started happening when I upgraded to kernel 2.6.20 on FC6, and has been happening ever since.

Because it began happening concurrently with the upgrade to the 2.6.20 kernel, I am led to believe that a certain system setting (or settings) has changed that changes my Firefox preferences back to original. So far, the "Accept cookies from sites" option is the only one that I have noticed. Someone please help!

--Joe:Pengy:

Basically, everyone leaves that unchecked. Instead you set the website in "exceptions". This is the preferred way to do this, because of the ubiquity of malicious cookies.

Thus I feel somewhat uneasy at the thought of helping you accept cookies globally. Similarly, you should be running the noscript extension.

What's The Difference?
 

I always leave the box unchecked. My problem was that the other day I was going through an unnamed corporation's website, and after I logged in and was doing some tasks that I needed at the moment it was redirecting me through different domains, and I needed the tasks done immediately. So, instead of taking the time to add all of the different domains to the "Exceptions" section, and/or accepting cookies on the fly for every different domain, I instead checked the box (because I knew the sites I was going through were safe) so that I could get my job done as soon as humanly possible (because the need was incredibly immediate).

The problem here is that it kept unchecking itself, and I didn't ask it to. I don't care if it's unsafe and I shouldn't do that, 99.9% of the time I don't. The issue is that I am seeing an action being performed that I didn't ask my system to do (unchecking the box), and I don't want that to happen.

Quite frankly, the fact that you think this operation is unsafe is irrelevant to my problem. Microsoft thinks that disabling my firewall in Windows XP is unsafe, but I certainly do it anyway, and I could care less if Microsoft disagrees.

Thank you for your concern about my safety, Simon Bridge, but I still would like to figure out why this is happening, and how to fix it.

--Joe:Pengy:

OK... fairynuff.

Looking around says that this is not something that gets complained about.
Experimenting shows that this isn't happening to me using Firefox 2.0.0.4 under Ubuntu Feisty.

What is the "keep until" setting?
Have you tried "ask me every time"?

Check other privacy settings, do you have you private history cleared when you close FF? (Not that it should matter.)

However, unable to duplicate the effect means cannot usefully help. If you can get it to happen repeatedly, then a survey of the settings can shed light... or is their a page which resets the setting when you visit.

Well, funny you should mention the "culprit webpage". In fact, I've noticed that this happens at random mostly, but for some reason unknown to me, it also unchecks itself every time I am on www.gnome-look.org and I happen to go to the 2nd (or 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc.) page of results. Very weird. Maybe I should just accept this behavior and move on, lol.

--Joe:Pengy:

I had the same problem using firefox (bon echo) 2.0.0.4 on Archlinux. Cookies were always off on restart resulting in me having to re-login to many sites. You might want to check your extensions to see if you have one that manipulates cookies in any way. I solved my problem by disabling an extension called Stealthier. Disabled it and cookies are back on! If you go into the preferences for Stealthier you can uncheck the cookies option if you want to keep Stealthier enabled. Hope this works for you!