Some sites in Firefox will not allow login unless in private window

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As the topic says, Some sites in Firefox will not allow login unless in private window. Sutter Health, for example. Login and it says “login failure” over and over. Private window, no issues. Same with several hotel sites where I am a member.

Cleared cache. Deleted cookies – all the expected and no good. Same with Waterfox G4 as well as Firefox currently using 91. Waterfox built on a later version of FF.

Need to fix this one. Must be an about:config swt=itch I gigure but Google has not found it for me.

Help?

Thanks.

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How do you have the Enhanced Tracking Protection set…Standard, Strict, or Custom? This can have an effect on sites’ practices as far as cookies and, of course, tracking via those cookies.

I take it that you’ve had no problem until this point, right?

Here’s a little cookie explanation from Sutter Health that defines how they use cookies of certain types on their site. By clicking a box, you have the opportunity to opt out of having to accept those cookies.

https://www.sutterhealth.org/privacy/cookie-preference

Sites can and do change how cookies are used, and sometimes cookies from a differently named domain are needed to help a site work properly for login WITHOUT tracking you for other purposes.

For example, there could suddenly be cookies from ww2(.)sutterhelth*(.)org as well as www(.)sutterhelth*(.)org to help you log into the site because they’re now using two different servers to give you the information you need from them to business, with each server having different sets of potentially-needed information. These different cookies could be used to identify you to each server without tracking you for advertising or other potentially unwanted purposes. If you’ve set FF to only accept cookies from http://www.sutter…, then it will reject cookies from ww2.sutter… without even telling you.

By the way, the * in the previous paragraph means that I deliberately mis spelled the name.

I use release channel version of FF, and always have. At 95.0.2 currently, I’ve had no problems logging into any of the sites I’ve needed to get to, including healthcare, travel AskWoody, and other categories of sites I regularly sign into.

One thought: Download a portable version of Firefox 91.4.1 ESR and install it. Go into its settings and set enhanced tracking protection to Custom, and allow it to block all 3rd party cookies, tracking content in all windows, block all cryptominers and block all fingerprinters. Now, try to log in to Sutter Health and let us know what happens. If you are successful, then it confirms your suspicions of your problem being related to an obscure setting within about:config that’s suddenly causing problems.

BTW: To uninstall the portable version of FF, just delete the directory it’s in, no formal uninstallation needed!

Bummer that Sutter Health only offers website support during the week. 

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Thanks so much Bob.

As soooo often the case, i found the problem after posting. But not yet the true solution.

Its the extension Forget Me Not – cookie manager. When disabled, no problem Sutter or Marriott or any of the other sites. And I have it set to Never Clean, so that is odd in itself.

And unfortunately, for the new we extensions this is the best cookie manager I have found. I find no setting in Forget Me Not to allow Sutter to work properly. But at keast I know the culprit now.

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…And I have it set to Never Clean, so that is odd in itself.

Although the cookie manager doesn’t purge the cookies, they do expire after a certain, pre-determined amount of time. That time is set within the cookie itself. Many cookies (especially healthcare-related, I would think) are session cookies, so they expire when you close the browser, or within a short amount of time of being set if you never close the browser.

Sounds like Forget Me Not is doing the work for you, but not as well as it could if you’re having problems suddenly. Perhaps there’s a newer version that’s been released in the last few days that fixes the problem? Go into FF and go to the Extensions manager. Once there, click on the gear symbol across from the phrase “Manage your Extensions” and then select “Check for Updates” from the resulting menu. That will automatically check for updates for all of your installed extensions and, I believe, install them as well.

Wow, I suddenly got logged out while I was typing this! My cookie must’ve expired, seriously! Just goes to show. 

I clicked submit and got prompted with a red warning that I had to solve the captcha. So, I went to my post and copied it all into the clipboard. Then I logged back in and clicked the “Reply” link and pasted it right back into the editor, no problem! It even saved the formatting!

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Nothing new for Forget me Not.

So not just health but hotels, maybe rent-a-car sites. Can’t imagine what the cookie manager is doing when set to not delete a cookie for a site. but that is the problem.

 

Thanks Bob. Happy New Year.

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Rebop – thanks for this interesting thread.  Forget me Not looks as if it works very similarly to Cookie Quick Manager, in which my setup is heavily invested; I’d be lost without it.  I can direct this to save the cookies that I want or need, and to wipe all the rest.  I was curious about Forget me Not, and took from the app home page on AOM that the same should be possible.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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