Why did Firefox start losing my login cookies?

October 19, 2011 4:28 AM

Why did Firefox suddenly start losing my login cookies every day?

I recently wiped my OS partition, installed Windows 7 64-bit and, as a result, had to reinstall all my software. Overall I'm liking it, but there's one thing that's started up since the upgrade that has me annoyed and confused. Every day, all of my login cookies disappear. Message boards, Metafilter, e-mail, I have to log in to everything anew.

I don't have any particularly strict security settings in Firefox, and it's not even that all my cookies are disappearing - when I check the folder, I see cookies from sites I visited a week ago. It's just logins. So I'm confused.

posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish to computers & internet (12 answers total)

Oh, and I forgot to mention: I don't shut down my computer every day, or even close Firefox every day. It's not a matter of logins being lost when a session ends.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:29 AM on October 19, 2011

Is the time/date on the computer set correctly?
posted by helios at 4:41 AM on October 19, 2011

Does it still happen if you start Firefox in its safe mode (all extensions disabled)?
posted by flabdablet at 5:00 AM on October 19, 2011

Also: what anti-malware package(s) are you running?
posted by flabdablet at 5:00 AM on October 19, 2011

Time/date is set properly, haven't tried safe mode, Ad-Aware Pro.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:03 AM on October 19, 2011

I don't like Ad-Aware much, and random cookie deletion does sound like something from an overzealous malware scanner's repertoire. Try uninstalling Ad-Aware and see if the stupidity stops.

I will generally rely on Panda Cloud Antivirus for anti-malware on Windows boxes; it's pretty effective and quite unobtrusive.
posted by flabdablet at 5:21 AM on October 19, 2011

You might also care to check AAW's logs to see if its regular scans have in fact been protecting you from the dastardly privacy threat posed by login cookies.
posted by flabdablet at 5:22 AM on October 19, 2011

Do you use CCleaner to clean up your computer? It's default setting is to delete all cookies (you can tell it not to).
posted by mbarryf at 5:33 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

In Firefox under the Tools > Options > Privacy menu, do you happen to have "Clear History when Firefox Closes" checked? Or have some of the other cookie settings mis-checked?
posted by FreezBoy at 8:43 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Solution: Do NOT clear "Site Preferences" when you Clear Recent History. (It took me forever to find this out.)
posted by jayne at 8:56 AM on October 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

I have had the same experience as HZSF, and it started when I installed FF6 upgrade. I hoped that FF7 and 7.0.1 would help clear up this phenomenon, but it has not been the case.
I use FF both at work on Win XP SP3 and at home on Mac OS 10.6.8 and I'm finding myself trying to grok Chrome more and more as FF keeps pissing me off. By the way, none of the solutions listed above apply to my situations.
posted by Lynsey at 11:14 AM on October 19, 2011

I do not use CCCleaner or the Clear History options in Firefox (and it happens without closing firefox, as mentioned). Nothing's coming up in the AAW logs.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:27 PM on October 19, 2011