Cookie/Privacy manager for Safari, Firefox, Chrome...

BollywooD · Mar 6, 2012

Hey guys,

This is Russell from SweetP Productions on the sunny Gold coast in Australia. I just wanted to let everyone know about my Cookie/Privacy app:
Cookie

Online privacy is fast becoming an issue, with sites like Google, FaceBook, and others taking advantage of our trust in them, to track our browsing habits.

My app, provides a simple method of taking back a little of this power, by allowing you as the user to clear out these 'tracks', manually, on browser quit, or on a set interval.

Cookie has many positive reviews on MacUpdate, and the App Store, and is a steal (i think) at $9.99.

anyway, take a look, and if anyone has any questions, feature requests, etc... drop me a line:
info (at) sweetpproductions(dot) com
or post a response in here.

Cheers

McGiord · Apr 8, 2012

Why should we pay?

https://extensions.apple.com/

BollywooD · Apr 8, 2012

Take a look in your privacy tab, in safari to see how many cookies you have in there. Thousands I bet. Then also check how many flash cookies you have, via the flash system preference pane... Tens, if not hundreds there I'm guessing.

I don't know about you, but I don't like all these websites leaving cookies on my computer unchecked.

McGiord · Apr 8, 2012

My point is why should anyone pay, if there are some extensions for Safari that are free.
Also you can enable private browsing and also block any cookies.
Also Flash 10 supports it.
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPl...ml#WS6aa5ec234ff3f285139dc56112e3786b68c-7ffb

Also iTunes needs the cookies.

BollywooD · Apr 8, 2012

Well yeah, you could go through and remove unwanted cookies, manually.

You could also dig a swimming pool in your backyard with a teaspoon....

This is a specialist tool, to automate the repetitiveness of a task, which some people find necessary.

Not everyone cares about targeted advertising, or leaving trails across the net, I do. I value what little privacy I have.

Private browsing is an all or nothing approach. At least with this, you can keep logged in to you favourite sites.

You could probably use something like 1password, in conjunction with private browsing I guess. But that product costs 5x what I am charging. I'm not sure if private browsing blocks flash cookies? I've never tested it. Also, you need to remember to enable private browsing each time you surf.

Its all about value I guess, if you find it useful. Buy it, use it. If not, then do it the free(more labour intensive) way.

It's good to have options.

You could even use my freeware safari(only) plugin: Safari Cookies

Weaselboy · Apr 9, 2012

BollywooD said:
Its all about value I guess, if you find it useful. Buy it, use it. If not, then do it the free(more labour intensive) way.

Just wanted to offer an alternative viewpoint to McGiord's.

I use and have paid for Cookie and find it is well worth the small amount of money charged. I am not aware of any app/extension that provides all the functionality of Cookie for free.

I mean we are talking about the cost of a couple beers here.

miknos · Apr 9, 2012

I'm using Cookie and it's a valuable tool to maintain your privacy. Would be better if it was free but ten dollars is cheap. Seems like the best cookie manager for Mac.

You can check the App Store to see many 5-star reviews.

dyn · Apr 10, 2012

If I look at the default features in Firefox and compare it to Cookie there is almost no difference. For Firefox there are quite a few extensions that are completely freeware like Ghostery, Noscript, HTTPS-Everywhere and even Adblock Plus that will allow you to set various options to safe guard your privacy. In total these extensions give you for more privacy options than this Cookie app does for $9.99. Extensions like Ghostery and Adblock Plus are also available for Safari and Safari has some privacy settings for cookies too.

Looking at the price tag, what Cookie does and the other available tools I'd say my vote definitely goes to all the other tools, mostly because they do a far better job.

Weaselboy · Apr 10, 2012

dyn said:
If I look at the default features in Firefox and compare it to Cookie there is almost no difference. For Firefox there are quite a few extensions that are completely freeware like Ghostery, Noscript, HTTPS-Everywhere and even Adblock Plus that will allow you to set various options to safe guard your privacy. In total these extensions give you for more privacy options than this Cookie app does for $9.99. Extensions like Ghostery and Adblock Plus are also available for Safari and Safari has some privacy settings for cookies too.

Looking at the price tag, what Cookie does and the other available tools I'd say my vote definitely goes to all the other tools, mostly because they do a far better job.

Firefox does do a good job of cookie mgmt., but we are not talking about Firefox. I am not aware of anything free that provides the functionality of Cookie in Safari for free. The extensions and Safari settings you mentioned are not even close to the same functionality of Cookie.

McGiord · Apr 10, 2012

Weaselboy said:
I mean we are talking about the cost of a couple beers here.

Don't mess with my Beer money!
No cookies preventer triumph Beer.

What exactly is done by this App that the extensions can't do?

Weaselboy · Apr 10, 2012

McGiord said:
Don't mess with my Beer money!
No cookies preventer triumph Beer.

What exactly is done by this App that the extensions can't do?

Fair enough... I mean who does not like beer.

But you are the one who said the functionality of Cookie could be replicated with free extensions. How about you show us the extension(s) that will do this.

McGiord · Apr 11, 2012

Weaselboy said:
Fair enough... I mean who does not like beer.

But you are the one who said the functionality of Cookie could be replicated with free extensions. How about you show us the extension(s) that will do this.

I have never used it, therefore I don't know exactly what Cookies does.
This is what I am trying to find out with my questions.

My question to you is the same, as you paid and currently use it.

This:" by allowing you as the user to clear out these 'tracks', manually, on browser quit, or on a set interval."
Can be done without Cookies and without paying.

What is so extraordinary, unique, different or peculiar about the Cookies App, to justify the investment?

Weaselboy · Apr 12, 2012

McGiord said:
This:" by allowing you as the user to clear out these 'tracks', manually, on browser quit, or on a set interval."
Can be done without Cookies and without paying.

How?

McGiord said:
What is so extraordinary, unique, different or peculiar about the Cookies App, to justify the investment?

Here is my pref pane from Cookies. Configured in this way when I quit Safari the following happens:

1. history is deleted
2. browser cache is deleted
3. webpage fav icons are deleted
4. non-favorite cookies are deleted
5. tracking cookies are deleted
6. non-favorite Flash cookies are deleted
7. non-favorite local storage is deleted
8. web page previews are deleted

I am not aware of any free app/extension that does this.

GGJstudios · Apr 12, 2012

Weaselboy said:
Here is my pref pane from Cookies. Configured in this way when I quit Safari the following happens:

1. history is deleted
2. browser cache is deleted
3. webpage fav icons are deleted
4. non-favorite cookies are deleted
5. tracking cookies are deleted
6. non-favorite Flash cookies are deleted
7. non-favorite local storage is deleted
8. web page previews are deleted

I am not aware of any free app/extension that does this.

Simply resetting Safari can delete all items listed above, but it does not allow you to preserve favorites. That's the real benefit of an app like this. If you don't have favorites that you want to preserve, you don't need this app.

dyn · Apr 12, 2012

Weaselboy said:
Firefox does do a good job of cookie mgmt., but we are not talking about Firefox.

Then you clearly did not read the topic start. This is an application named Cookie which function is to protect users privacy. We are not talking about cookies here, we are talking about protecting users privacy in a webbrowser. If you checked the website you came across the following:

Mac OS 10.6.8+ (Lion recommended), Safari 5.1+, WebKit, Chrome 10+, Chromium 10+, Camino 2.1+, Firefox 4+

This makes discussing these webbrowsers with this application very very on topic!

Again, it is not about cookie management, it is about privacy management. Cookies are only a very small part of the entire package.

I am not aware of anything free that provides the functionality of Cookie in Safari for free. The extensions and Safari settings you mentioned are not even close to the same functionality of Cookie.

Adblock Plus is available for Firefox and Safari offering the same kind of functionality. The same goes for Ghostery. HTTPS-Everywhere and NoScript are only available for Firefox making it the only (mentioned) ones that aren't available for Safari. Both browsers have a privacy mode, both browsers have a clean up mode (Safari: Reset Safari; Firefox: Clear Recent History).

You are correct about them not being even close to the same functionality as Cookie, they go beyond what Cookie does. Most of Cookie's features are actually part of the standard features of current versions of Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, etc. And that was my entire point: most browsers do what Cookie does by default and have extensions that go beyond it and ensure greater privacy for the user than what Cookie does. Yet they are free and most of them are open source too.

GGJstudios said:
Simply resetting Safari can delete all items listed above, but it does not allow you to preserve favorites. That's the real benefit of an app like this. If you don't have favorites that you want to preserve, you don't need this app.

That is not true at all, Safari does keep the favorites when you use the "Reset Safari" option. There are certain items that it deletes which you as a user can choose. Selecting all of the options and hitting the reset button does absolutely nothing to the favorites.

GGJstudios · Apr 12, 2012

dyn said:
That is not true at all, Safari does keep the favorites when you use the "Reset Safari" option. There are certain items that it deletes which you as a user can choose. Selecting all of the options and hitting the reset button does absolutely nothing to the favorites.

Yes, it is true. I'm not talking about bookmarks. I specifically said "favorites". I'm referring to favorite cookies and local storage, as mentioned in the post I quoted. Safari does not give you the ability to delete all cookies except those from favorite sites. Safari will delete all cookies or none.

Mawal · Apr 12, 2012

thank you, great app, exactly what I was looking for...particularly like the to manage my cookies on chrome and safari in the very same way.

McGiord · Apr 12, 2012

Ok, let's first understand the difference between these two things:
1- deleting the cookies, after they were allowed
2- preventing the cookie from being set.
How is the privacy actually kept?
I believe the highest level of privacy is obtained with #2.

http://www.cookiecentral.com/ccstory/cc2.htm

Ghostery, allows to define what is blocked.

Weaselboy · Apr 12, 2012

dyn said:
Then you clearly did not read the topic start. This is an application named Cookie which function is to protect users privacy. We are not talking about cookies here, we are talking about protecting users privacy in a webbrowser.

I am well aware of what we are talking about. If you look above you will see a screen cap I posted from the Cookie app on my system. I did add an S to Cookie in one post, so I can see where this may have been difficult for you to understand.

Again. I use Safari and I do not see any free apps or extensions that provide the same functionality.

If you don't want to buy the app, then don't. I'm not here to sell you anything.

dyn · Apr 13, 2012

GGJstudios said:
Yes, it is true. I'm not talking about bookmarks. I specifically said "favorites". I'm referring to favorite cookies and local storage, as mentioned in the post I quoted. Safari does not give you the ability to delete all cookies except those from favorite sites. Safari will delete all cookies or none.

The problem with that is that "bookmarks" and "favorites" are used for the exact same thing. Quite confusing

But you are indeed correct about the cookie management in Safari. It does not give you an exclusion list (or favorite cookies if you will) although it does give you the option to only block 3rd party cookies.

Weaselboy said:
I am well aware of what we are talking about. If you look above you will see a screen cap I posted from the Cookie app on my system. I did add an S to Cookie in one post, so I can see where this may have been difficult for you to understand.

It was actually the contents of the screenshot that screams cookies and not your typo

In that screenshot I see simple cookie management that nearly any webbrowser can do as well as the basic "clear history" function nearly any webbrowser has. I drew my conclusions based on your screenshot and Cookie's website, not on what you typed.

If you don't want to buy the app, then don't. I'm not here to sell you anything.

I know but I'm trying to point out that buying this app is a really bad idea because it is very basic functionality that has been around for quite some time in webbrowsers and extensions that do not cost you that much money. There are simply other solutions out there that do a much better job at providing privacy on the web. This application for instance does not block elements nor does it provide https by default. These things not only give you more security it also increases your privacy. So are you well aware what we are talking about? No.

GGJstudios · Apr 13, 2012

dyn said:
I know but I'm trying to point out that buying this app is a really bad idea because it is very basic functionality that has been around for quite some time in webbrowsers and extensions that do not cost you that much money.

Please provide a link to an extension or plugin for Safari that enables this selective cookie deletion.

Weaselboy · Apr 14, 2012

dyn said:
I know but I'm trying to point out that buying this app is a really bad idea because it is very basic functionality that has been around for quite some time in webbrowsers and extensions that do not cost you that much money. There are simply other solutions out there that do a much better job at providing privacy on the web. This application for instance does not block elements nor does it provide https by default. These things not only give you more security it also increases your privacy. So are you well aware what we are talking about? No.

Look, all I want to do is delete clutter I don't need when I quit Safari. In post #13 I listed the items that get deleted by Cookie app when I quit Safari. After all your posts I still don't see links to these free Safari extensions you speak of that will do the same thing. I want to use Safari and I don't want five extensions to maintain and still not have the same functionality.

I do understand what I am talking about in the context of my wants/needs for a browser (Safari). You seem to have different wants/needs and that is fine.

----------

GGJstudios said:
Please provide a link to an extension or plugin for Safari that enables this selective cookie deletion.

The same dev. that makes the Cookie app we are discussing here makes a free Safari plugin called Safari Cookies that will do that, but it uses SIMBL to hack Safari. SIMBL does not appear to be maintained any longer and does not work (at least not consistently) with Lion.

Angelo95210 · Apr 14, 2012

This application sounds like a great idea and I immediately bought it when reading this thread. Sadly it just made my computer crazy with fans speeding up and the app going out of control. So I just trashed it. $10 waisted for me.

Weaselboy · Apr 14, 2012

Angelo95210 said:
This application sounds like a great idea and I immediately bought it when reading this thread. Sadly it just made my computer crazy with fans speeding up and the app going out of control. So I just trashed it. $10 waisted for me.

You should contact the dev. He is pretty responsive.

Angelo95210 · Apr 14, 2012

Weaselboy said:
You should contact the dev. He is pretty responsive.

I guess. He can contact me in private if he wants. I am busy and don't have the time to deal with this hassle. For me an application has to work from first start or I trash it.

Cookie/Privacy manager for Safari, Firefox, Chrome...

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