Spybot 1.5 beta, Immunize v2 and Opera's cookies...

[GT500]

I'm using the July 11th beta of Spybot 1.5 and I'm using Opera 9.22. When I Immunize using Spybot's new Immunize function, Opera no longer remembers my usernames and passwords for the various sites I visit (my own forums, my own blog, the My Opera Community Forums/Blogs, etc).

While this is not a terrible issue, it's is a bit confusing, and I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't an unexpected behavior.

[GT500]

Oddly enough it seems to be OK now. I'm staying logged into the various sites I visit regularly...

Anyway, I'll post back with some more info on specific Opera builds and platforms and such when my anti-histamine starts working...

[PepiMK]

I've been testing this with Opera 9.21 (build 8776, Win32) mostly. But the files we work with shouldn't have to do with account settings imho; hmmm... I have the suspicion that cookies4.dat is used for more than just cookies , but handling of that file is not new, but has been in use for years now (Opera cookie detection is in 1.4 already).

Let me look up if there were any similar reports by mail, and install 9.22 as well, to check it

[GT500]

Opera has issues when processing it's cookies. I've noticed that sometimes they don't all show up in the cookies list, and when you remove some of the cookies (especially when you remove a large number of them) some of the ones that were deleted will still be there.

Last night I could not replicate the issue in Vista in Opera 9.22 build 8800 (at least I think I have 8800 on Vista). Right now the machine is booted from BartPE running JkDefrag, so it's going to be occupied for some time (the Windows XP partition was incredibly fragmented).

[GT500]

I've figured out what happened.

When I use Spybot's Immunize function, it deletes all of Opera's existing cookies.

It appears that the effect goes no farther than being required to log back into all of the web sites where a cookie was allowing automatic login.

Oddly enough, when I started checking Opera's cookies, they were all gone. I'm not sure if this is because I had deleted them all, or because Opera had expunged it's cookies due to incompatible entries. I'll do some more tests here, and add the results to this post.

Edit: Apparently Opera is saving it's cookies in a format that Spybot doesn't understand. The reason they were deleted earlier must have been my fault (I don't remember much about what I did last night due to allergy issues), but even when the cookies are not getting deleting Spybot does not see the entries it made after Opera has parsed and re-saved it's cookies file.

BTW: All of this is being done on Windows Vista x64 with Opera 9.22 weekly build 8800. This build should be released in a couple of weeks, and the weeklies are very mature. If you want to test with them, then check out the Opera Desktop Team blog for downloads and other info.

[PepiMK]

Hmmm... the cookie file is not an easy one, that's true. Cookies are not stored one by one, but in a tree built based on the domain. e.g.

* com
** spybot
*** forums
**** Cookie: username
*** www
**** Cookie: language
** badsite
*** Filter: block

Do you remember if it has worked with 1.4? Because I never heard any complaint about Opera cookies in 1.4 (Spybot-S&D was able to remove single Opera cookies there).

I'm going to create some before/after files and compare them

[GT500]

No, I don't remember any issues with Opera 9.22 and Spybot 1.4.

If I have some free time tomorrow, I'll do some more testing. I'll test Spybot 1.4 against Opera 9.22 build 8800, and I'll test Spybot 1.5 against the current final build of Opera 9.21, and I'll do it in both Windows XP x64 and Vista x64.

[PepiMK]

The blog you linked to is currently "experiencing technical difficulties", so I couldn't download there. I tried the following steps with 9.21:

1. Deleted cookies4.dat (for a clean test environment)
2. Started Opera, stored password for two sites, closed Opera
3. Immunized
4. Started Opera, checked sites (wand worked), closed Opera
5. Unimmunized
6. Started Opera, checked sites (wand worked), closed Opera
7. Immunized
8. Started Opera, checked sites (wand worked)

Ah, wait, I found build 8800 at Betanews and will try the same steps there

[GT500]

Direct download via this link (that's the MSI installer, classic installer is here).

Anyway, the issue I was having did not affect the wand. It was just automatic logins stored in cookies.

Whenever I go to a forum (especially the My Opera Community Forums) I have it set to log me in automatically. When Spybot 1.5 immunizes Opera's cookies, the cookies that were storing those auto-login passwords/session data/whatever are gone.

The other issue (which I'm sure you'll notice right away with 9.22) was that, after immunizing and then running Opera, Spybot no longer recognized the data it had written in Opera's cookies file, even though Opera's cookies manager showed it was still there.

I may have to go troubleshoot a mouse issue, so I'm going to try to get some more thorough tests done before I have to go. We'll see if I have enough time.

[GT500]

OK, I just finished testing Spybot 1.5 with Opera 9.21 build 8776 on Vista x64. I had deleted everything related to Opera before installing (program directory, profile directory, etc) to ensure a clean install. Here's what I found out:

Spybot's immunize writes the cookies in a format that Opera understands and it is not damaging the cookies that were already there.

Opera saves it's cookies file in a way that confuses Spybot's immunize function, and Spybot no longer sees all of the entries it added, even though Opera shows they are still there.

Now I do a clean install of 9.22 build 8800 to see if I get the same results, or if Spybot still damages Opera's cookies when it writes it's immunize data...