Modifying cookies from various websites

May 16, 2005 8:35 AM

Is there a utility or method to modify the expiry date of a cookie in Firefox from any website?

I have several "saved searches" on a website that are set to expire in 30 days, but I'd like to be able to use them indefinitely when I'm on the site. I don't think there's any options in Firefox itself to extend the expiry.

posted by Big Fat Tycoon to computers & internet (4 comments total)

How about add-n-edit-cookies?
posted by 5MeoCMP at 8:53 AM on May 16, 2005

Are you sure the expiration is stored on your computer? It's possible that the expiration date is stored on the server of the website you're visiting, and only ties to you with a user-id stored as a cookie on your computer.
posted by odinsdream at 8:53 AM on May 16, 2005

odinsdream: I'm almost 100% sure, as each search seems to create an individual cookie and each cookie has a different expiry date. If they were storing them on the server, they'd likely only create a single cookie with a "userid". Additionally, there's no login, so they wouldn't really be able to associate me with my searches effectively.

5MeoCMP: I'll definitely check that, from the sounds of it it looks like exactly what I want. Thanks.
posted by Big Fat Tycoon at 10:18 AM on May 16, 2005

Close firefox and edit the cookies.txt in your firefox profile directory, the number in the 5th column is the expirey time in seconds since 1970 jan 1 0:00 (UTC).

As odinsdream points out, the server could ofcourse not accept the cookie data after when it thinks the cookie should have expired, but this is unusual.
posted by fvw at 11:23 AM on May 16, 2005