After downloading and installing Firefox 2.0 last week, I noticed that the option to disable third party cookies was no longer available under Options–>Privacy. I didn’t think much about it until Steve Gibson addressed the issue in Security Now! Episode 64. And I have to agree with his asking “why?”

Firefox has not only become my favorite browser, but has also made me a firm advocate of all things Open Source. So why would the developers release Firefox with this option missing from the GUI? Perhaps they felt it was little used and they needed the room for other features.

The good news is that the option itself was not removed, only the GUI access. You can still disable third party cookies by going into about:config and setting the option network.cookie.cookieBehavior to 1. You do this by right-clicking on the variable and selecting “modify.” It also appears that if you had checked the box for this option in an earlier version, the setting migrates when you upgrade. Also, you can block cookies from any individual site by clicking the “exceptions” button and adding the site’s URL.
Cheers!
The Geek

[tags]Open Source, browser, cookie, Firefox, Ken Harthun[/tags]