On Sat, 14 Jul 2018 17:49:57 +0100, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 13/07/2018 23:14, Ralph Fox wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jul 2018 17:03:05 +0100, Brian Gregory wrote:
[...]
Turn off third party cookies and set the do-not-track flag?

I do not turn off third party cookies any more. Instead,
* I configure my browser to only keep cookies until I close it
* After logging out of Google, I close and restart my browser
to clear cookies.
* I use a master password so my browser cannot log into Google
by itself.

I found that some sites could not work without third-party cookies.
For example, I could not top up my mobile phone. The phone company
outsourced payments processing to a third party who does it securely.
The third party used cookies to track through the steps of topping
up. With third party cookies turned off, I kept going around in
circles on the top-up page.

Then you enter the mobile phone site as an exception to the no third
party cookies rule.

I did not see "allow third party cookies" as an option in exceptions.
The only three options are, block, allow, and allow until I close the
browser. I looked in both Firefox and Chrome.


The do-not-track flag is like putting a sign outside your home saying
"do not burgle" -- a sign which real burglars will ignore. Set the
do-not-track flag if it makes you feel good, but do not expect much.

Well yes, but presumably a few people are obeying it.

Damned with faint praise.

See the Wikipedia article, especially the part about its effectiveness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track#Effectiveness

As an anecdotal case, I hope you did not miss noticing in the Wikipedia
article that Microsoft had turned on "do not track" automatically in IE10
even though Microsoft itself did not honour "do not track". :-D


--
Kind regards
Ralph

🦊