Firefox

I noticed some additional information about concerns regarding firefox prefetch. It happens that Google recently enabled prefetch on the first links of their search results pages, and this, in combination with the default settings of Firefox (actually all recent Mozilla browsers, I believe), is causing additional cookies to be set. The original quote is from Google & Firefox == Evil & Annoying.

I recently did a search at google for "radio shack". To my surprise, I received a cookie setting request from radio shack.com. This had never happened before- and radio shack also happened to be a sponsored link. I did other searches, such as "ford", "sony", and even "girl scouts"- and each time, the top link requested a cookie to be set. Since Girl Scouts did not have a sponsored link- I realised it must only be the top link that sets a cookie. It turned out that Mozilla browsers (that includes firefox) and Google have both enabled prefetch- although it would seem that Google only recently enabled it- as this is a new occurrence.

I myself have Firefox delete all cookies when I exit firefox, and that seems to work best. Sites that require cookies for session control work, but nothing is remembered between sessions. It's not perfect, but it's a decent compromise.

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Read more from this blogger: Joi Ito's Web: Google sending prefetch cookies