Tracking Cookies

[Guest250]

Hi everybody,

I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium with IE 8.0 & I installed Chrome 6.0, Opera 10.62 & Firefox 3.6.10 (all installed outside sandboxie but forced to run inside sandboxie) & also using CCleaner,

Every browser is set to force run under sandboxie (dafault settings),

I'm not able to reproduce this problem mentioned by Blues & VivaDalifa (followed the same steps ie visited ebay),

I hope you heard about evercookie ([url]http://samy.pl/evercookie/[/url]) which an incredibly persistant cookie site (featured in New York Times ([url]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/busin ... r=1&hp[url]) & GRC Security Now ([url]http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm[url])

I checked evercookie [url]http://samy.pl/evercookie/[/url] with all my browsers and after the deletion of sandbox it is not able to recognise my PC, (ie the UID set to undefined)

Can you also please check this site and report back?

Is there any other sites which creates this kind of cookies other than ebay?

If you are also installed the FF outside Sandboxie, I think this cookies may be created by some software which IS already installed in your PC

[Tsimmes]

I don't think that Firefox even puts cookies into the Windows/IE cookies folder. I think recent versions of Firefox put cookies in a database file called cookies.sqlite.

VivaDalifa do you have any eBay software on your computer that might be creating these cookies?

Actually Tzuk, I believe the Fx cookies are in a file called places.sqlite.

[soccerfan]

I think recent versions of Firefox put cookies in a database file called cookies.sqlite.

Actually Tzuk, I believe the Fx cookies are in a file called places.sqlite.

Actually, tzuk is right. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Cookies

Cookie information is stored in the profile folder, in two files. Starting with Firefox 3.0 and SeaMonkey 2.0 the cookie information is stored in the files cookies.sqlite and permissions.sqlite. In Firefox 2 or below and Mozilla Suite/SeaMonkey 1.x, cookies are stored in the cookies.txt file and cookie site permissions are stored in the hostperm.1 file.

[VivaDalifa]

I don't think that Firefox even puts cookies into the Windows/IE cookies folder. I think recent versions of Firefox put cookies in a database file called cookies.sqlite.

VivaDalifa do you have any eBay software on your computer that might be creating these cookies?

No, I don’t think I have any eBay software installed (you can never be sure -though- these days!). I installed Sandboxie two-three days ago and I ran Firefox sandboxed (in the default sandbox). Everything seemed to work fine. After I closed Firefox, I ran SuperAntispyware and it found one cookie from a site I visited in the sandboxed session. I had a look at Ccleaner as well and it found one more cookie (marked as an Internet Explorer cookie). After this, I went into eBay etc. I run cookie deleting software quite often- Ccleaner on a daily basis- and I don’t think I have “old” cookies in any of my browsers. Regarding Firefox, the thing was installed in my computer years ago and just keeps updating and working well. I think it is set up to accept third party cookies. The Internet Explorer sits idle and unused and gets updated- I assume- by Windows Update.

[steamer]

there are two settings in IE8 you need to change:

1. Under internet options, security- choose custom level. Down near the bottom of the list of settings you will find a setting called "userdata persistence". Set to disabled. I believe this turns off flash cookies.

2. Now go to internet options, advanced. down near the borrom of this list is a setting "Enable DOM storage". Uncheck this setting. This turns off support of DOM style persistent cookies used by Firefox.

Not sure just which versions of IE this applies to, maybe back as far as IE6.

I think if you retry your test, the cookie storage will stop. There is some interaction with IE here; I am not sure what the mechanism is, but I believe any browser which supports DOM (Opera is one) or which has flash installed can find the cookies on your hard drive, no matter the browser that stored them. And IE some how can be used to store the cookies, even tho you are not using it (or some dll).

It would be nice if Sandboxie could block this interaction.

There is also the "evercookie". I caught this in my sandbox a couple of times, but deleting the sandbox got rid of it. No matter what you do, when you get this certain cookies keep regenerating themselves on your hard drive after you delete them.

Hope this works for you!

[VivaDalifa]

Thanks for the advice, much appreciated. I will follow your suggestions and report back soon.

[VivaDalifa]

Hello again, I followed Steamer’s advice and I do not find cookies anymore. Prior to this, I had disabled Explorer’s cookies altogether and also disabled Microsoft’s plugins in Firefox (there were quite a few of them actually, like six or seven). My actions were more of a voodoo character rather than based on technical knowledge, like Steamer’s. Anyway, I would have gotten rid of IE a long time ago, but I read somewhere that it is apparently important for the stability of the whole windows OS and performs other functions, apart from browsing the Internet. One of them seems to be snooping on other browsers’ cookies. Thanks again for the help, have a nice day.