Mastodawn

Yesterday, when I opened Gmail in Firefox on Linux, I found myself logged out of my Google account.

In place of Gmail was a landing page extolling the virtues of Gemini in Gmail and providing prominent options only for signing up or creating a new account. I managed to follow a less prominent option to just sign into Gmail. I dont know how but, although I ended up in the account recovery flow rather than the login flow, I still managed to sign in.

Tech giants are throwing every dark pattern at forcing AI. This is known, no surprise here. But there's something else I don't understand.

In addition to my Google account I found myself logged out of all my accounts on unrelated sites I was signed into from Firefox, even in multi-account containers. Even non Google sites with no Google account or Gmail address in the credentials. How did they do that?

#gmail #google #gemini #ai #askfedi

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💙🩷💜Ⓑⓡⓔⓣⓣ🐡🍉🐧Mar 23

@[email protected] delete the file where all the cookie info is stored (that's my guess)

"Inside your Firefox profile folder, you’ll find a file that specifically handles cookies. Historically, Firefox used file: cookies.sqlite"

https://en.fmyly.com/article/where-are-the-cookies-stored-in-firefox/

Where are the Cookies Stored in Firefox? A Deep Dive for Users and Developers - Fmyly

Ever found yourself wondering, "Where are the cookies stored in Firefox?" It’s a question that might pop up when you’re troubleshooting a website login issue,

Fmyly

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Paolo Amoroso Mar 23

@brettm Can any website delete that file?

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Bojidar Marinov Mar 24

@amoroso @brettm If I may, I would say it is much more likely that Firefox itself deleted all cookies and not that a specific website did so.
You can delete cookies with the "Refresh Firefox" button or with the "Clear browsing history/data/cache" buttons, or even with the "Clear history/data on exit" options. In addition, if anything happens to the cookie file that would leave it corrupt, Firefox will recreate it.
..A vulnerability allowing this kind of file access would be wasted on cookies.

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Paolo Amoroso

@bojidar_bg I wonder what may have triggered that. I've been using web browsers since NCSA Mosaic 1.1 and I'm reasonably sure I haven't performed any explicit action to clear the cookies or data.

@brettm