That question came up to me, when recently working on one project I needed to restart my PC several times. And therefore, while I used 3-5 web apps I needed to log back in to each one of them again, after each restart. And I started wondering if privacy-wise that auto-clear feature is worth it or not? Has anyone maybe tested that?
So Firefox has tab sandbox isolation built in, but its cumbersome to use. When I started using waterfox they suggested a Mozilla add-on that made the feature more available. Have to go look at it, container something.
That being said, you can explicitly set URLs to sandbox groups, which is pretty handy when you want to keep cookies buy you don’t want them shared necessarily across sites.
Combined with noscript and ublock I have fine grain control of what I allow to run on sites and what cookies I’ll take.
So for sites I regularly visit I have it all preconfigured.
Then I just use a sandbox for random browsing.
Ticks all the boxes for me, without needing separate browsers for “everyday” tasks.
I do this. I just use a password manager that makes logging back in take 2 seconds, so I don’t mind.
I’ve taken to the habit of just logging in to the few sites I have accounts every time I open the browser. At this point, all my browsers are configured to delete all data. I don’t find it an inconvenience, and I feel it adds a layer of security. I don’t even use a password manager (though I should), as brain exercise I’ve memorized the few passwords I need. For me, it’s definitely worth the slight extra hassle. However, I accept this may be a bit much, given I’m pretty much the only person who uses this computer. I just feel more comfortable flushing all those pesky cookies daily.
Shared computer? Clear Browsing Data on Exit.
Personal computer? irrelevant annoyance.Use isolated browser instances instead. I want to be able to install useful addons for YouTube without having to worry if they’re monitoring me when I’m online banking etc. All modern browsers offer this. And I use a mix of browsers for different tasks. Like Firefox for most things because of the ad blocking / privacy. But I still use chrome for compatibility as some websites are lazy.
You could use a chromium browser other than chrome that’s more privacy respective like cromite
The profile selector for Firefox (I use Librewolf) is a nice way to manage different settings for websites that need to keep browsing data. You can also use containers but I find alt-tabbing more easy to keep track of. Foxyproxy is good for this
I use 4 different browsers and lock down each one depending on task… my general browsing browser is set to wipe every shutdown. The others only ever visit a single site.
I’ve been using cookie autodelete to clean crap from most sites, but whitelisting the ones I don’t want to log back in every time
https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete
another advantage is that cookies are cleaned seconds after the last tab on that website is closed
Anything that requires PII in a separate browser that doesn’t clear on exit. General browsing on my main browser, which clears data on exit, except for a small list of exceptions. It doesn’t defeat non-cookie fingerprinting, but I at least get rid of all the cookies that I don’t want.
