The great 'No cookie list' mystery continues apace.

[bbnetwork]

Yay! I have at last received an electronic-mail notification of a reply to my thread! Hopefully this encouraging scenario will become status quo ante, rather than a pleasant surprise, in future.



That's the good news. Zenobia, the following are enabled under "Tools > Options > Privacy >":



Thanks again for your greatly-appreciated help in this matter of cookie revelation (or, rather, lack thereof) on the part of Safer-Networking's otherwise marvelous Spybot - Search & Destroy. We're doing the testing Safer-Networking itself should have done and should be doing, but in the minds of corporate management we're merely Beta testers with wallets.

Ok, as far as i knew this could be the problem:

Firefox use custom settings and is set to keep and save history and cockies. This way it logg this infos and other app can not access them.

As for the Testing-Statement:
Spybot have been in a long Beta but it is for every Programmer impossible to create a Program in this way, wihout the possibility there wont be a problem on the thousends of dufferent Systems into the World. Else MS would not need to update its Os after released.

[Zenobia]

I'm glad the email notification worked.
Okay,those custom settings in Firefox shouldn't affect cookies being saved.And Clear history when firefox closes is not checkmarked,Flyvapnet?

[Flyvapnet]

Bbnetwork and Zenobia, what you're saying is that I should enable the "Clear history when Firefox closes" function? All right, I'll give that a go. But ... there's a "Settings" button which wakes up when one enables the above-mentioned function; and the resultant dialog box contains:

Settings for Clearing History

When I quit Firefox, it should automatically clear all:

History

Browsing History [Enabled]
Download History [Enabled]
Form & Search History [Enabled]
Cookies
Active Logins
Cache [Enabled]

Data

Saved Passwords
Site Preferences
Offline Website Data

"Enabled" is just my word for indicating what's checkmarked or ticked. Should I enable other categories, or disable ones presently enabled, or leave it the way it is? I sincerely thank you for your continued help and patience!

[Zenobia]

No,I didn't want you to checkmark "Clear history when Firefox closes".I asked about it because I wanted to double check that it wasn't checkmarked.If it had been,I would have asked you to click the Settings...button and make sure that Cookies were not checkmarked under "When I quit Firefox, it should automatically clear all:"

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...gs-for-history
Could you click the Show Cookies...button?Is there quite a few cookies listed in there?

[bbnetwork]

I too did'nt say to enable the clear history Option.

Im not sure if the ignore-cookies-list will work with Firefox now at all.

Lets see if there cookies saved at all, like zebonia suggested. If there are cookies i would like to ask, if u tryed to close FF fully and if this did help?

[Flyvapnet]

Thank you once again, Zenobia and bbnetwork, for your advice! I'm sorry to have misinterpreted your intentions, regarding the "Clear history when Firefox closes" checkmark at Tools > Options > Privacy. I did check it, however, then closed Firefox and waited several minutes before opening Spybot - Search & Destroy. No cookies appeared on the "Ignore Cookies" list.



Since the notification-of-reply messages have stopped coming, after that brief interlude of proper communication a few days ago, it was only much later that I read your most recent replies here. So, I unchecked the "Clear history when Firefox closes" box and closed Firefox; then, after another several minutes' wait, I opened Spybot. This time a single Internet Explorer cookie appeared on the "Ignore Cookies" list, but there was still no sign of any Firefox cookies.



That's the bad news. The good news is that I did as Zenobia suggested, clicked on the "Show Cookies" button at Tools > Options > Privacy and beheld a bunch of cookies. Yay! Their hiding place is discovered! I deleted the ones with unrecognizable names, in case they might be "bad" cookies, but kept the ones which readily identified themselves via easily-understandable names.



At this point, I am assuming either (a) Firefox refuses to show its cookies to Spybot or (b) Spybot refuses to show them on its "Ignore Cookies" list. Just which corporation, Safer-Networking or Mozilla, is at fault here is a moot point since there's nothing I can do about a second party's intransigence. The "Ignore Cookies" era for Firefox users seems to have come and gone, perhaps never to return. But I'm sticking with Firefox!



When I run a Spybot scan and green items show up, it seems "good" as well as "bad" cookies are deleted when those green items are "fixed"; and I then have to go through the tedious sign-in process at all my regularly-visited Web sites. That any Firefox cookies at all are deleted seems odd, since (judging by the now-useless "Ignore Cookies" function) Spybot supposedly can't find Firefox cookies. It sure finds them when it scans and when it "fixes" green items!



So, I'm out the money I paid for that new Spybot and the old one doesn't do all it used to. What a dilemma! Anyway, that's the state of affairs here as of now. If you've any further advice for me, be assured I'll welcome it! Thank you again for your help.

[Zenobia]

If you would prefer that your "good" cookies weren't deleted after the Spybot scan,deselect the checkmark next to the green Cookies before you press Fix Checked,and Spybot should skip fixing them.

That's about all I know of to try to get cookies to show in Ignore Cookies.
I have been trying to think back and remember if running as administrator affected cookies being shown in Ignore Cookies or not,but I just can't remember.
Is your User Account on XP an Administrator's account,or a Limited account,Flyvapnet?

[Flyvapnet]

Zenobia, "administrator" is one of those things I've never appreciated. I log on when the local machine starts up, but just who the machine thinks I am is anyone's guess. Am I being recognized as an "administrator" or just as the guy who uses this machine all the time?

I can see the value of having an "administrator" function in an office setting where there are many machines, but I'm at home and have just this one machine. Bear in mind it was given me, with Microsoft Windows XP Professional already installed. The guy who kindly gave me this setup did some things enabling me to use it, but exactly what he did remains a mystery.

Anyway, under Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Computer Management (Local) > System Tools > Local Users and Groups > Users my full name appears as the Full Name next to "Administrator"; but there's also "ASPNET", "boinc_master", "boinc_project", "Guest", "HelpAssistant", "Joe" (with the Full Name "Flyvapnet") and "SUPPORT_388945a0". I used to run some Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) software, but I haven't done that in a long time; so maybe I should just delete those two "boinc" entries, if possible.

But I digress. Nevertheless I'm scared to death of trying to log in under a different (shall we say) identity and, by some happenstance, becoming forever locked out of my one and only surviving machine! This password system we're all stuck with is nothing but a load of old cods, as far as I'm concerned, because it assumes the machine's user or users will perpetually remember all manner of passwords.

[bbnetwork]

Hello Flyvapnet,

the question about beeing Admin, could be maybe part of the problem with the cockies, since Firefox logg its cokies and stuff, in newer Versions and so they are'nt this easy accessable.

But as far as i remeber, beeing Admin or not beeing Admin, did become to a problem a bit later, with Windows Vista and above, when MS changed the User-Control and addend the UAC, in XP these problem should'nt have been as much present.

However, there are more as one Administartor-Account possinble.
The built-in Administrator account is hidden from Welcome Screen when a user account with Administrator privileges exists and enabled (if you are the only user, it is usually this way) and you are enabled as Administartor, but this Administartor is not the same as the build-in-Administartor!

In Windows XP Home Edition, you can login as built-in Administrator in Safe Mode only.
For XP Professional, press CTRL + ALT + DEL twice at the Welcome Screen and input your Administrator password in the classic logon window that appears.

You also could do one of the following to enable Admin:

-1. use the classic Windows application without the welcome screen:
To do this, go to "Start" in the "Control Panel" and select "User Accounts" from. Including "Change the way users log" you will find where to remove "Show Welcome Screen" check the box before. Then click on the button "Apply Options".

-2. use manual registry edit:
Click Start, Run and type Regedit.exe
Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon \ SpecialAccounts \ UserList

Use the File, Export option to backup the key
Create a new DWORD Value named Administrator
Double-click Administrator, and set 1 as its data
Exit the Registry Editor.
This may work with XP Professional only.

-3(a). Open the Control Panel:
Double-click the User Accounts icon.
Click the user account you wish to grant administrative rights to.
Click "Change the account type"
Select Computer administrator and then the Change Account type button.

-3(b). Alternative method:
From the Windows Desktop right-click on My Computer.
Click Manage, which should open the Computer Management Window as shown below.

Click the + next to Local Users and Groups or double-click it. Note: If you cannot access this section it's likely you do not have administrator rights to the computer.
Click Users and in the right pane you should see all user accounts setup on your computer.
Double-click the account you wish to view the rights of.
Click the Member Of tab.
If the user is a Member of "Administrators" that account already has administrative rights. If this group is not listed click the Add button.
Type "administrators" and then the Check Names button. If successfully found you should get your computer name followed by \administrators and have it underlined. For example, HOPE\Administrators.
Click Ok.


If you dont knew the Password for the Admin-Account, please have a look here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321305/en

But once again, im not sure, if beeing the real Admin, will solve the cockie-miracle.

[bbnetwork]

i think the promlem is located into this:

In some browsers, each cookie is a small file, but in Firefox all cookies are stored in a single file, which is stored in the user profile.

(found on http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsupport.mozilla.org%2Fde%2Fkb%2Fcookies-informationen-websites-auf-ihrem-computer)

And this one file is, as far as i knew, also encrypted.

So maybe, if you are not Admin, Spybot can not access the profile-data from Firefox, as they are located into %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ and this path is usually hidden.
But this may not be the only problem, even if you, as Admin (root-Admin = build-in-Admin) can access the file, the file still is, as far as i knew, also encrypted, which may make it impossible to read it from within another program then Firefox