Not all data deleted when container closes

[Sntchown]

• Temporary Containers Version: 1.8
• Firefox Version: Dev 77.0b2 (64-bit) and Nightly 78.0a1 (2020-05-04) (64-bit) on Windows

Actual behavior

Some stored data remains after a temporary container is deleted.

Expected behavior

All stored data should be removed.

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Firefox with new profile

2. Install TC

3. Configure TC to automatically isolate by domain and to delete empty containers immediately. Config file here: temporary_containers_preferences_2020-5-4_19.23.31.txt

4. Open Options tab, verify no data is stored from Yahoo:

5. Open new tab, load yahoo.com

6. Reload Options tab to see that data is now stored with Yahoo tab still open:

7. Close Yahoo tab. Notification from TC shows data being deleted:

8. Reload Options tab and see that some data remains:

Here is the debug log: yahoo.log

Notes

Same thing happens with Youtube.

[stoically]

Can confirm that some storage remains on my end as well, at least on youtube:

Unfortunately that's not something that can be fixed on TCs end, since it just makes one API call to contextualIdentities.remove. So someone would need to report this to Firefox's Bugtracker.

There was a similar problem in the past: #127

Keep in mind, that even when the storage remains, it isn't accessible from websites since it's associated to the deleted container id.

[Sntchown]

I can verify that this happens with other container extensions as well, and on Dev 77.0b2 (64-bit) as well as Nightly 78.0a1.

[Sntchown]

Bug submitted to Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1636187

[Tonev]

Hello,

I have the same issue as the OP but found a way to delete those empty cookies (I don't even know how to call them) upon closing the browser.

• Go to about:preferences#privacy
• Do the following changes under History section:

It's not an elegant solution for those who want to keep track of their history, but thought I would share it anyway.

P.S. I have the Cookies option unchecked because I use Multi-Account Containers to keep cookies from certain websites.

[protist]

Bug submitted to Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1636187

Looks like the bug submitted here was closed as a dupe of this bug, but that was closed a month ago as "WORKSFORME" with the following message.

I can't reproduce this issue or its duplicates. If I remove data for a site, e.g. YouTube or Facebook it will not re-appear in the data clearing window. After clearing all site-data and restarting Firefox, there will be new data added, because about:newtab populates the cache. Happy to reopen the bug if anybody else runs into this issue!

I don't actually use Temporary Containers, partially because of this issue, so I can't give upstream more details. If anyone can contribute, please post there!

[stoically]

@protist Thanks for the update.

I don't actually use Temporary Containers, partially because of this issue

I'm curious, why would this specific issue be a blocker for you to not use TC? Because in terms of privacy/security it's a non-issue, as stated above:

Keep in mind, that even when the storage remains, it isn't accessible from websites since it's associated to the deleted container id.

[protist]

Thanks @stoically. Probably just paranoia and a misunderstanding of how it works! Yes, that doesn't sound too bad then.

I guess one minor issue would be that there would be no limit to the amount of data stored locally? But presumably if users delete all cookies occasionally, then these would also be deleted?

[stoically]

Generally the issue doesnt happen for all containers/websites, and if it happens it's just 4kb of data most of the time. Some users arent affected at all, and I havent verified if it still happens at all - after all the upstream Firefox issue was closed as not reproducible.

But yes, manually clearing data also removes the left-over data.