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Comment by cpeterso | Hacker News Reader

Firefox is integrating a cookie feature from Tor called first-party isolation or double-key cookies. It will separate third-party cookies for each first-party site, so evilcorp.org cookies for evilcorp.org images on a.org will not be set for evilcorp.org images on a.org. Blocking third-party cookies can break some site that rely on third-party resources, but first-party isolation should allow each site to work without cookie "crosstalk".

You can test first-party isolation now by flipping the about:config pref "privacy.firstparty.isolate" to true. Beware that there are still bugs that break some sites, which is why the feature is not enabled by default yet. If you find bugs, please report them in Bugzilla! Here is the Firefox bug tracking the integration and known bugs:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1299996

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I'm glad Firefox is doing this, but ...

> Blocking third-party cookies can break some site that rely on third-party resources

Can anyone name sites that require them?

As someone who defaults to deny all cookies and manually enables every one my browser accepts, I don't think I've found a site that requires 3rd-party cookies. Few sites require cookies unless you login or have shopping cart.

Of course, that's anecdotal. Maybe I just don't visit certain categories of sites and don't encounter them.

I think I remember allowing them to watch Thursday Night Football on Twitter. I can't find anything about third-party cookies and tnf.twitter.com on Google though.

My university uses Piazza often as a forum, linked in through our course management site, Canvas. If you don't have 3rd party cookies, it used to just not work, but not it redirects you into opening a new tab/window for Piazza. It's still annoying and would be nice to have it right there in Canvas

I've been blocking 3rd party cookies for years. I think I've seen less than five sites break.

hbogo.com relies on third party cookies from my cable company.

The Shopify plugins from Bold use them.

StackOverflow, sadly. Their Javascript requires some off site cookies to allow for their cross domain user account stuff. Not enabling third party cookies on the StackExchange sites leads to broken pages.

Wouldn't that be the case for any site using sso?

Yes, though there are some ways around this. You could send the user to another domain to sign in using a unique request ID that identifies the user. After authenticating this unique ID can be communicated back to the first site to show the user has authenticated, and a cookie could keep the session information. That wouldn't give a seemless sign-in on every site, though - you'd need one cookie (and one sign-in) per domain.

The other way is to have all StackExchange sites be subdomains of stackexchange.com - which is how the designers of the web intended it to be, I think.

Google.

The entire notification center, cross-site hangouts chat, etc all requires third-party cookies.

Quidco.com and similar referral-promotion sites.

Ah, neat. That sounds like exactly what I want (except to be able to set a whitelist). Thanks!

For anyone else interested: now that I know what to search for, I also found some status at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/FirstPartyIsolation

so evilcorp.org cookies for evilcorp.org images on a.org will not be set for evilcorp.org images on a.org

I'm not sure this description is as clear as you intended.

oops! You are right. I meant:

... so evilcorp.org cookies for evilcorp.org images on A.org will not be set for evilcorp.org images on B.org.

Can you edit your post?

Probably not. HN only allows editing comments for a limited amount of time. In one post I found from a couple of years back, someone said that the edit window is two hours. I think perhaps also that as soon as someone has replied to a comment it will not be possible to edit that comment any longer but I'm not sure about that.

I knew I stayed with Firefox for a reason. Privacy isn't even the real issue for me: this should take a big bite out of CSRF attacks.

best thing that happened to mozilla was losing the money from google. yahoo pays them almost the same and does not meddle on anti tracking features.

note how every single privacy feature came after google-money. during google-money what did we got? third party cookies accepted as default.

good riddance, google.

I'd love to know how those corporate conversations go exactly. Is it so blatant as saying "no you won't work on these anti tracking features?" Or is it more "this will be so you focus on" which conveniently excludes undesirable stuff?

This. And, what is really Google paying them for? Ensuring that there is no mainstream browser left that would complicate things for ad/tracking sponsored web (and so never creating an incentive + ecosystem for any alternative)?

Could you provide some examples? That's a serious allegation.

I remember, as a volunteer, debating some privacy issue with a Google dev in Bugzilla. They made some crack about looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the discussion was out in the open. I don't recall evidence that Google was influencing Firefox improperly, but OTOH absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ...

I doubt people on the trenches were blatantly in on it. But I gave my views on the outcome. Investigate that and see the pattern.

Well, that's a cute line of defense, but pretty obvious if hand-waving if you ask me. "You're too low on the ladder to know what I'm talking about."

You're the one who accuses Mozilla and Google, of different things, sure, but fairly important things anyway.

The burden of proof lies with you. Not us. It is not up to us to "find the pattern."

Not that I disagree with you on the fact that Mozilla seems much better off, post-Google.

I think the more likely explanation is that Google withdrew* once it became clear that Chrome was far more popular. This same event led Mozilla to do some soul-searching (aka user surveys, etc.) as to why they were losing users, and what their USP was compared to Google - privacy is one of them.

* Note that "withdrew" might also mean "offered less money than before because Firefox had less users than before, and Yahoo! offering more.

He said unless I say otherwise. First-party isolation lacks customization hooks.

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