lusito / forget-me-not

Make the browser forget website data, except for the data you want to keep.

Forget Me Not Web-Extension

Install on Firefox

Project On Ice

I'm sorry to say this, but I have to put the project on ice. -when Mozilla announced, that they would remove persistent background pages, I was in the middle of a big rewrite to support more features. When persistent background pages are gone, I will have to rewrite almost everything from scratch and lose a lot of features in the process.

This was a fun project, but it grew so big, that I wasn't able to maintain it properly by myself anymore and certainly not with the persistent background pages gone.

You can keep using the extension as long as Firefox doesn't remove persistent background pages.

Privacy Statement

Your privacy is of the utmost importance. This extension does not analyze or collect anything beyond what it needs to fulfill its duty. It does not send any data anywhere not even anonymously. PERIOD.

About the add-on

This web-extension deletes data websites store in the browser in the following situations:

• When all instances of a website have been left
• When the browser starts
• On Creation
• Manually

Some data might not be cleanable in some scenarios. Check the built-in tutorial for more information

Help

If you have problems, questions or other feedback, please create an issue here on Github.

If you like it, please write a review.

License

The code of this add-on has been released under the zlib/libpng License

forget-me-not's Issues

Periodically purge expired cookies

Firefox seems to keep expired cookies until some cookie limit is reached before it purges them:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=576347

It would be nice to have an option to purge expired cookies at set intervals and/or browser start (both of course optional).

Private Window support

I've tried your extension for a bit and immediately noticed that when in a private window the extension is disabled. Is this a deliberate feature? If not; will support for private windows be added? Much appreciated!

Greylist bug

(Firefox 58.0b11, Forget Me Not 0.8.6 [with quite a few extensions enabled, and many about:config changes. I can share more details if needed, I just have no idea what you'd want to know])

This seems great, and I wouldn't mind using this over CAD, but I cannot for the life of me get greylisted-host cookies to clear on startup. I have two greylist rules:

*.youtube.com (previously just youtube.com, I had hoped a more flexible rule - that would also include cookies that Firefox says are part of the .youtube.com domain - would have been a solution but it made no difference)

multiup.eu

I have the following enabled:

Clean on browser start:
Cookies
Apply Rules
Local Storage
Apply Rules

Making sure I have no multiup.eu or youtube.com tabs open in the two windows I have open, I exit Firefox from the File menu and start it again after all the windows are closed. When I check about:preferences#privacy->Show cookies two minutes later, I still have the same multup.eu and YouTube cookies.

Setting to configure the tab opened on popup start

Could you make it not reset to the "This Tab" tab every time it's opened? e.g. if I last had the Cleanup tab open and I close it, I want it to remember to re-open to Cleanup.

... a "default tab to open to" option would also be great!

So, create a dropdown option where a user can select either of the tabs or "last active tab"

Bigger spacing between Local Storage and Apply Rules label

Hi Lusito,

please set a bigger spacing between the text "Local Storage" and the checkbox for "Apply Rules" to the right of it on the Settings tab. The Sorbian translation "Lokalny składowak" is too long to fit in the gap so the word "składowak" is moved to the next line. The checkboxes "Apply Rules" could line up with those of "Downloads", "Passwords", "Plugin Data", and "Server Bound Certificates" in the area below them.

Thanks,
Michael

Notification setting when extension has been updated not honored

"Show a notification when the extension has been updated", I had this disabled, but still received a popup in the right corner informing me about the update (clicking on it, opened up the changelog).

First party isolation stops cookie removal from working

https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/22/how-to-enable-first-party-isolation-in-firefox/

Enabling first party isolation stops cookie removal from working correctly.
This is due to an API limitation, which is going to be fixed with this ticket:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1381197
Until this ticket is solved, I can't do much.

Everyone who wants to use forget me not needs to disable this setting for now and remove existing cookies manually. Because cookies created when the setting was enabled can not be removed.

Change Icon during Snooze

When turning on snooze mode, it would be nice if the blue flower icon would change; perhaps the same faded color shown in private window mode.

Is "clean plugin data" limited to plugins

Is "clean plugin data" limited to plugins or does it also clean extension data?

Some cookies not being auto-deleted

Go to github.com, close tab, cookies remain even after the timer-based cleaning mechanism has run.
There are no whitelist/greylist etc settings for that domain.
Manually running clean-up gets rid of them.

Cleanup cookies and localstorage for a single container.

Probably within the "cleanup" tab, an option to clean cookies only for the active container.

Enhanced Support for First Party Isolation

#10 only fixed the bugs when FPI is enabled.
Since FPI bundles cookies by domain (even thirdparty ones), ideally all cookies should be removed once that domain is left.

This is not trivial tho, since firefox does not use the domain visible in the url-bar, but the base-domain.
A base domain would for example be amazon.com for www.amazon.com. This seems easy enough, but it gets complex once you have Top Level Domains of multiple orders. Like www.bbc.co.uk (base-domain: bbc.co.uk) or even some private ones like michelgagne.blogspot.de (base-domain: michelgagne.blogspot.de, since blogspot.de is a considered the public suffix).

Since mozilla doesn't provide an API to get the base-domain from any URL, I'll have to depend on thirdparty javascript libraries, which are slow due to the sheer amount of special cases to consider:
https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat

So I'll have to find a good approach that doesn't compromise the fast browsing experience.

Add option to disable badges.

Could you add an option to disable the W, G, etc. overlay icons that appear over the Forget Me Not icon on the toolbar? They feel a bit distracting to me personally.

Protecting individual Cookies

An expert option to drill down on a whitelisted domain's cookies and select which specific cookies to keep (as opposed to keeping all the domain's cookies) would be useful.
CookieCuller (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookieculler/) and CookieKeeper (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookiekeeper/) offer that functionality, but they won't work past FF56.

Thank you

Blacklist to Specifically Delete Cookies

Hey there;

I used to use an extension to delete cookies from specific domains on browser close. I've been trying to find a replacement since the firefox update. For the most part, I want to default to keeping cookies, but there's certain domains (I'm looking at you, Google and Dropbox) where I DO NOT want to auto-login but they do not provide a means to logout on browser exit.

Your extension is the recommended replacement and it's pretty close ... is it possible to blacklist certain domains and leave the rest? So basically, when leaving all instances of a domain, delete if its on the blacklist. The black list would operate no matter what the other settings are ... so in my case, I would leave the "clean when leaving all instances of a domain" unchecked but black list the things I really don't want on there.

Make menu disappear after "Clean Now"

For usability it would be helpful if after performing any of the "cleaning" commands the addon's menu would disappear. It seems that "cleaning" will be the final action one would take from the menu most of the time.

Mouse-over descriptions

When setting a new rule, the colors are not explained. White, grey, red and black are only explained in the general app-description. A mouse-over popup on the dropdown menu would be very helpful.

Inform users of new options when available

When new options have been added, users should be informed about them.
It should, of course, be possible to opt out of this.

Show notification or open new tab? or show notification, which opens new tab?

Apply rules on history removal as well

It's possible to clear history items based on their URL, so there should be an option to apply rules.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/history

Temporarily disable

Add a way to temporarily disable automatic cleanup to avoid issues during shopping.
It should still remember what to cleanup, so when the user re-enables it, it should run cleanup.

Display notification on cleanup

Add an optional setting to display a notification on cleanup, showing what has been cleaned.

Support Container Tabs: Local Storage

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers

Containers keep cookies, localstorage, etc. in different stores (named by the cookie stored) if this feature is enabled. The cookie part of this is to be solved with #8.

This ticket is about local storage, since browsingData.remove does not have an option to remove local-storage based on a cookie store id yet. There is a ticket, which would resolve this though:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1353726

As soon as that ticket is solved, work can be done to fix this.

Feedback

lockPref("network.cookie.cookieBehavior",2);
lockPref("network.cookie.lifetimePolicy",2);

Hello,

to resume, I won't use the Deny Thirdparty Cookies. Because as you can guess, I don't need it.
Then I'm wonder if you plan to replace it ? On the page about:preferences#privacy, there is one button called Exceptions... and my idea is to create another list for them (right now, grey or blue is the choice).
Unless you believe : it wouldn't be better to create another lite addon ?

If I want to use Firefox_v58, I will need to find an alternative to CookieKeeper (or to wait a long time for Cookie-AutoDelete)

Kind regards.

Remove history since start of session

It is possible with session api to get all domains/urls visits since the current session (getRecentlyClosed) and to then delete only those entries using the deleteUrl api in combination with the history.search api (deleteUrl).
This solution would remove all previous history of visited urls instead of the latest visits. A way to overcome this would be to use the deleteRange api instead, starting at session start, and then manualy adding non-blacklisted items through addUrl, providing the original visit time as the visitTime option.

Protecting/removing single cookies

A request from Reddit:

I'd like to preserve individual cookies. Some sites use one cookie to track the user and another cookie to control presentation, like the number of search results per page. I would like to nuke/block the tracker cookie but keep the presentation cookie. A whitelist, maybe with with regexp, might be a good way to accomplish this.

The behaviour for this needs to be elaborated first:
I guess if a single cookie can be whitelisted, then the domain itself should not be whitelisted by the user (so when the normal removal kicks in, whitelisted cookies are protected).

Example
User wants one cookie at domain xy.com to remain, but others to be removed. User will not whitelist xy.com, but instead create a cookie protector for the pair of ([email protected]).

Support Container Tabs: Domain Leave and Cookies

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers

Containers keep cookies, localstorage, etc. in different stores (named by the cookie stored) if this feature is enabled.
Domain leave detection and cookies removal needs to take the cookie store id into account.

Limit / Disable most recently accessed cookie domains

The Domain log can be helpful when creating new rules, but it would be nice to have an option of how many entries are saved (including none at all) to better protect privacy.

Thank you

Add "Add this host" button to "This Tab"

There should be a quick way to add rules for the current tab.
let's say we're on hello.world.tld, then the following options should be available

• add hello.world.tld as [white/gray]
• add *.hello.world.tld as [white/gray]
• add *.world.tld as [white/gray]

Except if the rule already exists of course.

Questionnable default selection

I do not think that 'white' is a good default selection, as it seems to denote the browser's standard behaviour (if I am not mistaken). Wouldn't 'grey' be more likely to be selected?

Change wording and invert checkbox state for "Protect currently open domains"

Perhaps the wording could be changed so that everything is deleted when the box is checked. This would be consistent with the wording scheme on the tab (box checked = things get deleted).

Wording needs to be changed, option needs to be inverted.

No Access to Preferences

How does one access the preferences? The features sound great, the screenshots look great, but there is no Preferences button on the Add-ons Manager like my other add-ons, no listing in Edit>Preferences, no menu item under Tools. I've disabled the Pop-Up Blocker, even though I have no settings to import. The instructions tell me to check the settings, but don't tell me how.

Running Firefox 57.0.1 64-bit on Fedora 26. Adding screenshot of Add-Ons Manager to show other, possibly conflicting add-ons.

Import Settings doesn't work.

For some reason, import settings only works when I use the add-on as a developer.. once released, it does not work anymore.

Bugzilla Ticket: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1366330

Workaround: Disable the popup blocker temporarily

Explain rule creation

To users who have never used such a plugin, it't not intuitive how a rule can be defined.
#3 Should make it more obvious, but a questionmark icon showing a description popup on click might be a good idea.

Subdomain cookies classified as 3rd party cookies?

I noticed that the addon classifies subdomain cookies as 3rd party cookies.
Even with 3rd party cookies disabled in FF 58.02, unless enabling "remove thirdparty cookies on creation" in your addon, subdomain cookies won't be deleted after closing the tab.

whitelist for simple local hostnames

add a checkbox (and type switch?) to allow all domains that do not have any top level domain.. like localhost or intranet

"Cleanup" -> Clean Now, not deleting current tab cookies

Go to any webpage that sets cookies (verify with Firefox cookie manager).
Click "Clean Now" under "Cleanup" (all boxes are selected).
Cookie is still there. Clicking "This tab" clean now, will delete it.
No domain rules have been set.

Add a log view

Add a log-view to see which cookies have been removed in the last x minutes, so one can easily add them as rules.

Global Blacklist as default with ability to allow overrides?

I know there's a blacklist option already and perhaps I misunderstand how it works, so forgive me if I'm just being dumb!

Basically, I'd like the option to simply block all cookies as the default option. Once done, I'd like to be able to selectively allow sites to set cookies, either for a session or permanently.

This is basically how I used to do things, with an addon, prior to webextensions and how I still do, it's just that the native firefox UI for managing this is pretty horrible.

Is this possible?

Displayed tab after setting a rule

Adding a new rule, does not bring you back to the recently selected tab (e.g. log). In fact, it does not even show the current rules, but stays on the newly set rule, until the add's frame is closed and opened again. A skip back to the last tab (in app frame) or displaying all currently set rules would be handy

What does clear "Service Workers" do?

What does clear "Service Workers" do, and what are the implications of doing that?
I mean, why wouldn't someone want to clean them?

Flash cookie removal

Perhaps for future consideration, being able to remove flash cookies would complete this addon (even if it's only on demand or after restarting the browser).

Thank you

Investigate header modification

Investigate if it's worth it to modify headers for the following scenarios:

• Add DoNotTrack headers for non-whitelisted sites. (can be done via firefox options, but would be another whitelist to manage and not as comfy)
• Remove (thirdparty) cookies before they get set

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DNT
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/webRequest

There are other extensions which do similar things.. but who wants a whole bunch of extensions each with a whitelist to be maintained.

Local Cookies Aren't Removed

Download a page that uses cookies onto your desktop.
Open it from your desktop.
Close tab.
Cookies remain and cannot be cleaned even using manual cleaning.

Resizable dialogs

Hi Lusito,

please make dialogs resizable, e.g. settings window. It is important for translations into other languages where the strings can be longer than the English ones. I sent you the Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian translation and because of a word with three letters the tab titles in the settings window are truncated with Lower Sorbian.

Thanks

Implement a true Blacklist

Implement a new rule type Black.
Cookies matching this rule will never be allowed to be set.
Since this will only work for cookies, but not local storage, local storage should behave as if the rule was red.
If multiple rules match a domain: black > red > white > gray

Show list of cookies

Offer possibility to browse cookies... a quick method might be to show this (on firefox):
chrome://browser/content/preferences/cookies.xul

Optimize the popup on firefox mobile

The popup is very small on the android version and you need to zoom in before you can do anything. This needs to be optimized. Maybe get a few mobile-specific things in addition.

Ambiguous color for "white"-rule-selection

The rule-type 'white' has an ambiguous color scheme. In the dropdown menu it is displayed as deep blue, but when selected (not marked), it turns white. Straight white would seem slightly more intuitive and avoid confusion with the bright-blue color of the marker.

Add explanations for different cleanup checkboxes

As seen in #39, some of the checkboxes for cleaning are missing explanation.
In the help page, there should be explanations what exactly each checkbox will clear.

Split options into subtabs?

It's getting crowded in the settings tab.
Maybe the settings should be split into different categories to keep things easy to discover.