• ArchRecord@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    For those who don’t care to read the full article:

    This basically just confines any cookies generated on a page, to just that page.

    So, instead of a cookie from, say, Facebook, being stored on site A, then requested for tracking purposes on site B, each individual site would be sent its own separate Facebook cookie, that only gets used on that site, preventing it from tracking you anywhere outside of the specific site you got it from in the first place.

    • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Hahahahaha so it doesn’t break anything that still relies on cookies, but neuters the ability to share them.

      That’s awesome

      • ripcord@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Honestly, I thought that’s how it already worked.

        Edit: I think what I’m remembering is that you can define the cookies by site/domain, and restrict to just those. And normally would, for security reasons.

        But some asshole sites like Facebook are cookies that are world-readable for tracking, and this breaks that.

        Someone correct me if I got it wrong.

        • ArchRecord@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          Total Cookie Protection was already a feature, (introduced on Feb 23st 2021) but it was only for people using Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) on strict mode.

          They had a less powerful third-party cookie blocking feature for users that didn’t have ETP on strict mode, that blocked third party cookies on specific block lists. (i.e. known tracking companies)

          This just expanded that original functionality, by making it happen on any domain, and have it be the default for all users, rather than an opt-in feature of Enhanced Tracking Protection.

          • ripcord@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            That’s not what I was thinking of, which was even more fundamental. But that’s good info (and another way to cover stuff in the article).

            Edit: what I was thinking originally was really stupid, that 3rd-party cookies weren’t allowed at all. Which was really dumb since of course they are.

            • catloaf@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              No, you weren’t far off. A single site can only get and set cookies on its domain. For example, joesblog.com can’t read your Facebook session cookie, because that would mean they could just steal your session and impersonate you.

              But third-party cookies are when joesblog.com has a Facebook like button on each post. Those resources are hosted by Facebook, and when your browser makes that request, it sends your Facebook cookies to Facebook. But this also lets Facebook know which page you’re visiting when you make that request, which is why people are upset.

              With this third-party cookie blocking, when you visit joesblog.com and it tries to load the Facebook like button, either the request or just the request’s cookies will be blocked.

              Although that raises an interesting question. Facebook is at facebook.com, but its resources are all hosted under fbcdn.com. Have they just already built their site to handle this? Maybe they just don’t strictly need your facebook.com cookies to load scripts, images, etc. from fbcdn.com.

        • Telorand@reddthat.com
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          4 months ago

          They’ve been doing this with container tabs, so this must be the successor to that idea (I’m going to assume they’ll still have container tabs).

          • jollyrogue@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            Container tabs are still a thing in FF. This is based on that work, if I remember correctly.

              • Kushan@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Same, they’re an absolute game changer for me. I have to use multiple different identities in work due to separate active directories and container tabs makes it super easy

          • snaggen@programming.dev
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            4 months ago

            Container tabs are still useful, as they let you use multiple Cookie jars for the same site. So, it is very easy to have multiple accounts on s site.

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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        4 months ago

        Unless that cookie was somehow important for you to use both sites, but thats incredibly rare.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        From my experience, blocking 3rd party cookies in general doesn’t seem to make any difference for site functionality anyways. Though I never log into sites with a Google or FB account other than Google or FB sites (and rarely at all for the latter).

      • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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        4 months ago

        It increases implementation complexity of the browser and loses people who fund Firefox and contribute code $$$

    • Liam Mayfair@lemmy.sdf.org
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      4 months ago

      Isn’t this basically Firefox’s version of the third party cookie block that Chrome rolled out a few months ago? Or am I missing something here?

      I mean, it’s good news either way but I just want to know if this is somehow different or better.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      4 months ago

      Disabling cross site cookie is already a thing for decades…

      Same with Do Not Track requests.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        Do Not Track has never really done anything, it just asks websites politely to not track you. There’s no legal or technical limitation here.

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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          4 months ago

          I still much rather have it than not. It also lead to the spiritual successor GPC which does actually have regulatory requirements under the CCPA.

      • ArchRecord@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Disabling cross site cookies and allowing them to exist while siloed within the specific sites that need them are two different things.

        Previous methods of disabling cross site cookies would often break functionality, or prevent a site from using their own analytics software that they contracted out from a third party.

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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          4 months ago

          Thank you for your explanation, tbat greatly clears up my confusion.

          TBH, if a person’s concern is being tracked by, for example, Facebook; then this just lets Facebook continue tracking them without directly allowing Facebook’s anaylitics customers to track them to another site directly (but indirectly that information can still be provided). But I guess for all the people giving FB and Google those proviledges better to have this than not.