User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; de; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; de; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14 With preferences set to "accept cookies" / "always ask", certain sites produce an infinite loop of cookie permission dialogs, despite having "remember this decision" checked (note: i'm running firefox in german, so the exact text / gadget labels might be different in english firefox). Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Flush cookies (Delete private data) 2. Set prefs to "accept cookies" / "always ask" 3. Clear the list of cookie exceptions in the preferences (remove all sites) 4. Quit and restart firefox 5. Go straight to http://www.nabble.com/SuperCollider-f2891.html Actual Results: The cookie permission requester dialog pops up (see first attached screenshot). Independant of the choices, even when "remember decision" is checked, the dialog pops up again and again. After some dozen repetitions, a distorted dialog pops up (see second attached screenshot) that doesn't respond at all. Need to force-quit firefox, but problem reoccurs upon next start, sometimes disappears when accessing the site differently (e.g. as a link from google results). Expected Results: Firefox should store my cookie preferences for that site and the dialog should not pop up again if "remember decision" is checked. Mac OS 10.4.11, German, Intel Core Duo

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052903 Firefox/3.0 Confirmed on this build exactly as indicated Sometimes you can get 3 or more of the cookie permission requester dialog pop ups to occur even though you click the remember box and click the allow button - confirm that the "nabble" web site is allowed by the following steps - Firefox -> Preferences -> privacy tab -> click show cookies button - observe nabble web site in the window

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 Confirmed exactly as indicated, too.

This bug is still around in Pre7: Here's my crash report: 126b16ad-379a-4175-af14-bd6622100912 (saw a bug report somewhere off of this but can't find it, but someone also reported same issue at same site: Bug 597325

I haven't seen this problem since FF4 betas. However nabble.com (link from Comment #1) has changed (I think), so maybe that's also a cause. I can't say.

I haven't had any crashes although I've been mostly been using my regular profile as of late so things are already set so unless I go someplace new... However, I switched to my beta testing profile to see if I could find a site to try and crash the browser. I didn't have any luck with the catalog site or oprah.com. However, and I don't know if I should file a separate bug or keep it here. When you get a multitude of popup boxes for the cookies. It will appear you are stuck and you can't clear them anymore. I finally investigated it today and findings were a little funny. I knew that you had to clear what appears to be older popup boxes (were under the box that you were stuck on). I thought it had to be for the same domain to clear it. It wasn't. I tested at cnn.com. I uploaded a screenshot of the cookie prompt boxes from where it got 'stuck' when I was clearing them out. See 'Cookie Prompt Stuck' #1 is the prompt I was stuck at that refused to clear out no matter what button I pressed or trying to close it. It just stayed there. Each subsequent box underneath is numbered sequentially (2,3...). At #4 or #6 was when I was able to clear out #1. I initially thought I had to clear out previous boxes with the same domain, but 4 and 6 are ads.cnn.com as you can see. After clearing #2 and #3, I still was NOT able to get rid of that box. Because I thought it was an issue with the domain name as noted, I didn't check beyond that till I hit #5. Note, I wasn't sure how many boxes I had so I was playing around with laying them out to #4 and #6 might be reversed. Needless to say, it is rather odd behavior. I'm not a developer, but I really think Mozilla should rethink the way cookies are handled. The end-user shouldn't have to sacrifice sanity for privacy handling. It's a big turn-off. One other annoying thing, and this might be a separate bug is that some sites while trying to send the cookies think cookies are off and tell you that you need your cookies are on. Bestbuy.com USE TO require cookies to browse their site. I don't have another site offhand for testing purposes of this.

It's funny, I hadn't had this happen in months, then I got this update, and literally 12 hours later this issue took my whole browser down. I was trying to get a connection going at a Hyatt hotel, which redirects any queries to their provider in order to charge you fees before setting a cookie to allow you through. Their provider site originally crashed me with this "infinitely spawning cookies" problem - gateway.eagle_shs.com.

I think this bug is related to bug 515521 and/or bug 434971.

Still happening on *all* platforms. Verified also on: Name: Firefox Version: 7.0.1 User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1

I'm at 8.0.1 for Mac and this is still going on. I'm stunned.

Reproduced: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:13.0a1) Gecko/20120212 Firefox/13.0a1 New test URL: http://www.masterfile.com/stock-photography/search/Greg+Stott

This bug should be moved the an appropriate product / component since it's kinda invisible in Firefox / General.

This is a Firefox bug. The "always ask" setting is not supported; the bug is that Firefox allows it to be set in the first place.

The bug is to always show one dialog at most, and if 'remember decision' is checked, then re-evaluate, that it is appropriate to ask the same question again.

(In reply to Boris Zbarsky (:bz) from comment #19) > This is a Firefox bug. The "always ask" setting is not supported; the bug > is that Firefox allows it to be set in the first place. Does this suggest to remove this feature completely?

If you want a browser that doesn't malfunction and crash, yes.

(In reply to Boris Zbarsky (:bz) from comment #22) > If you want a browser that doesn't malfunction and crash, yes. Better: the whole networking code should be removed, so we wont get any cookies over the network

(In reply to Boris Zbarsky (:bz) from comment #22) > If you want a browser that doesn't malfunction and crash, yes. Thanks for clarification. It's interesting, because this very feature is one of *the* reason for me to use FF (and this since 1.0 came out): it's one of the few things really giving me the sense of being in control and allowing me decide in time, what gets stored and what not.

“Always ask” is a great feature. I don't want cookies from sites that don't actually need it to work, nor from sites I'm not actually visiting. Please don't remove this feature. That said, the multiple windows issue happenned again just happened to me again with FF 12 (see screenshot; note the repeated content on some of them). One thing which makes the thing worse with all these dialogs is that the last one becomes modal for all the rest. So they have to be clicked in exactly the reverse order of when they appeared. Considering the attached screenshot (there actually are several layers, all for the same domain), this becomes so messy that killing firefox after having made the choice for the topmost window (once found) one and checked “Use [...[ for all” is more efficient.

I already posted this mock up for #648609, but this bug seems to have become the official one, so here it is again. This mock up proposes an UI consitient with most of Firefox's now per-site interaction (location, password, ...), by showing all the cookie requests that need be addressed for that page to load, but putting everything nicely in a tree-like view similar to the cookie manager.

Apologies if this is not the proper kind of message to leave here, I want to put in a plea for addressing this problem. Being able to choose which cookies to accept (or not) is an important privacy feature and one that, as a user, I've invested a lot of time in. In the course of web use, I have accepted thousands of cookies and rejected thousands more. I'm not the only one, many friends and co-workers also go thru this pain in order to preserve some semblance of privacy while also being able to interact successfully with the many websites that have become an essential part of our lives. But the irritation of using this feature in its current half-implemented form, is torture. For instance, every time I start FF, it asks about the doubleclick.com cookie and every time, I click to not accept and the "remember decision" is clicked. Yet FF asks me the next time FF is started. Its not just doubleclick.com, this happens for every website I use. "remember decision" seems to be just for the current session. well, not even that, because sometimes i get asked even for cookies from sites that i've already responded to in the current session. and yes, the multiple pop-ups for multiple cookies from the same site (which is what i think this bug report specifically addresses) is beyond annoying. i'm sure that this is not easy to address, requiring a new interface and perhaps a new model. but pls do this as my other options are to accept all cookies (NO!) or try another browser. as a devoted FF user, i don't want to do that. not clear that other browsers do much better at this anyway...

(In reply to Ron Wolf from comment #28) I've been using this dialog since , I guess, five or more years (feels to me like I've always used it, don't know). It brought me great awareness but also annoyance. I switched my mentality: don't accept cookies, unless required. By using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-controller/ , I'm able place easy accessible buttons which allow me to a) enable it for session only or persistently and b) easily allows me removing site-specific or all session cookies. I don't operate on Dialogs with this add-on but only on the icons in my toolbar. YMMV. HTH

I'm getting a particularly frustrating variant of this problem with firefox 17.0 on 64-bit Fedora 17 Gnome. I get a stack of these cookie confirmation dialog boxes and I wish to click "allow for Session" on each of them. The top of the stack won't take a click! If I drag the FF window, some of the stack of dialog boxes moves, and some doesn't. Then, at least one of the visible boxes can be clicked and dismissed. Observation 1: the biggest surprise is that the box that I can click after this maneuver seems to have the same contents as the former top box that was unresponsive. I wonder if the display was not correctly rendered before the maneuver. Observation 2: if the cookie dialog box were not modal (is that the correct term?) and each of them would take clicks at any time, the order of the stacking would not be so critical. Right now, I feel like I'm in a game of Adventure (twisty little passages, all alike) and I don't want to be.

See also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633763 "Cookie confirmation dialogs should be tab-modal"

(In reply to Markus Fischer from comment #29) > (In reply to Ron Wolf from comment #28) > > I've been using this dialog since , I guess, five or more years (feels to me > like I've always used it, don't know). It brought me great awareness but > also annoyance. > > I switched my mentality: don't accept cookies, unless required. By using > https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-controller/ , I'm able > place easy accessible buttons which allow me to a) enable it for session > only or persistently and b) easily allows me removing site-specific or all > session cookies. > > I don't operate on Dialogs with this add-on but only on the icons in my > toolbar. YMMV. HTH Marcus, Thank you for the pointer to cookie-controller, much better!!! Almost good enough. Don't know why I didn't think to look for an add-on, maybe assumed that cookie mgmt is a core browser function and didn't think "add-on". Anyway, thx!!! So then two additional comments: 1) The cookie-controller add-on is SO MUCH BETTER than FF's built-in cookie mgmt that I suggest dropping the idea of fixing FF's built in function and instead incorporate cookie-controller in the mainstream release. If you like, I'll generate a long list of how cookie-controller add-on is better. 2) I don't find the essential and documented "same as the previous session" cookie controller option. Marcus? Do you see this option? Maybe I'm just missing it???

(In reply to D. Hugh Redelmeier from comment #30) > I'm getting a particularly frustrating variant of this problem with firefox > 17.0 on 64-bit Fedora 17 Gnome. > > I get a stack of these cookie confirmation dialog boxes and I wish to click > "allow for Session" on each of them. The top of the stack won't take a > click! If I drag the FF window, some of the stack of dialog boxes moves, > and some doesn't. Then, at least one of the visible boxes can be clicked > and dismissed. > > Observation 1: the biggest surprise is that the box that I can click after > this maneuver seems to have the same contents as the former top box that was > unresponsive. I wonder if the display was not correctly rendered before the > maneuver. > > Observation 2: if the cookie dialog box were not modal (is that the correct > term?) and each of them would take clicks at any time, the order of the > stacking would not be so critical. > > Right now, I feel like I'm in a game of Adventure (twisty little passages, > all alike) and I don't want to be. Yes, this is the bug that is being complained about here. Nasty. Suggest you take Marcus' (as I have) and install the https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-controller/ add-on.

This bug has been around for four years....it's KILLING me. I'm having to Force Close Firefox in Mac OS X about once every two dozen websites or so. Why isn't this a more major bug and why isn't this fixed yet?

See comment 19.

(In reply to tom wible from comment #36) > Created attachment 751675 [details] > blank cookie dialog this also locks the associated window. i have also experienced the looping dialogs, which occasionally are infinite.

I can't believe no one could fix this problem in 5 (!) years, from Firefox 5 through 22 (= 17 major versions). http://apple.com -> images.apple.com cookie dialog hangs forever. re-starting FF does _not_ help. In other words, not possible to see Apple website in Firefox with custom cookie permissions. ----- { "application": { "name": "Firefox", "version": "22.0", "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0", "supportURL": "http://support.mozilla.org/1/firefox/22.0/Darwin/en-US/" }, "modifiedPreferences": { "accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar": 0, "browser.cache.disk.capacity": 358400, "browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run": false, "browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max": false, "browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value": 358400, "browser.history_expire_days.mirror": 180, "browser.places.importBookmarksHTML": false, "browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion": 4, "browser.search.suggest.enabled": false, "browser.search.update": false, "browser.search.useDBForOrder": true, "browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone": "22.0", "browser.startup.homepage": "about:home", "browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID": "20130618035212", 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"extensions.checkCompatibility.6.0": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.9.0": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.4.2p": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.4.2b": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.7.0a": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.12.0": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.11.0a": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6b": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.5.0pre": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0p": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0b": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6p": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.5.0p": false, "extensions.checkCompatibility.5.0": false, "extensions.lastAppVersion": "22.0", "font.internaluseonly.changed": false, "gfx.blacklist.webgl.msaa": 4, "network.cookie.prefsMigrated": true, "network.cookie.lifetimePolicy": 1, "places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages": 104858, "places.database.lastMaintenance": 1374075636, "plugin.state.iphotophotocast": 0, "plugin.importedState": true, "plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types": "application/pdf", "plugin.state.officelivebrowserplugin": 0, "plugin.state.silverlight": 0, "plugin.state.flip4mac wmv plugin": 0, "print.print_margin_top": "0.5", "print.print_paper_width": " 8.50", "print.print_to_file": false, "print.print_orientation": 0, "print.print_paper_height": " 11.00", "print.print_unwriteable_margin_right": 25, "print.print_printer": "", "print.print_command": "", "print.print_downloadfonts": false, "print.print_scaling": " 1.00", "print.print_reversed": false, "print.print_unwriteable_margin_left": 25, "print.print_unwriteable_margin_bottom": 57, "print.print_pagedelay": 500, "print.print_paper_size_unit": 0, "print.print_margin_right": "0.5", "print.print_oddpages": true, "print.print_bgcolor": false, "print.print_bgimages": false, "print.print_evenpages": true, "print.print_margin_left": "0.5", "print.print_shrink_to_fit": true, "print.print_unwriteable_margin_top": 25, "print.print_margin_bottom": "0.5", "print.print_in_color": true, "print.print_paper_size_type": 1, "print.print_page_delay": 50, "print.print_paper_data": 0, "privacy.cpd.siteSettings": true, "privacy.donottrackheader.enabled": true, "privacy.cpd.offlineApps": true, "privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs": true, "security.warn_viewing_mixed": false, "storage.vacuum.last.places.sqlite": 1373907530, "storage.vacuum.last.index": 1 }, "graphics": { "numTotalWindows": 1, "numAcceleratedWindows": 1, "windowLayerManagerType": "OpenGL", "adapterDescription": "", "adapterVendorID": "0x10de", "adapterDeviceID": "0x a29", "adapterRAM": "", "adapterDrivers": "", "driverVersion": "", "driverDate": "", "webglRenderer": "NVIDIA Corporation -- NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M OpenGL Engine", "info": { "AzureCanvasBackend": "quartz", "AzureFallbackCanvasBackend": "none", "AzureContentBackend": "none" } }, "javaScript": { "incrementalGCEnabled": true }, "accessibility": { "isActive": false, "forceDisabled": 0 }, 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"{73a6fe31-595d-460b-a920-fcc0f8843232}" }, { "name": "Easy YouTube Video Downloader", "version": "6.8", "isActive": false, "id": "{c0c9a2c7-2e5c-4447-bc53-97718bc91e1b}" }, { "name": "GoogleSharing", "version": "0.22", "isActive": false, "id": "googlesharing@extension.thoughtcrime.org" } ] }

Actually first reported is FF 2, so the bug survived through 20 major versions.

Hello Mozilla. Seven-and-a-half years or thirty-six versions ago, I reported this major bug. Great effort. Here is another link if you want to crash your system with that infinite dialog: http://www.welt.de/politik/article147257996/Was-Merkel-treibt-grenzt-an-Untreue-im-Amt.html (sorry, it's some German language right-wing ****, I just happened to click it -- perhaps it's an omen that this Henryk dude comes straight from hell)

@Sciss: Yes, it's ridiculous this bug has persisted for nearly a decade. I actually STOPPED using Firefox two years ago because I got tired of this bug on my Mac. I now use Chrome as my only web browser. This is ridiculous. It's a shame, because I really really really wanted to support Mozilla, but this bug rendered the browser totally unusable on my Mac.

Fwiw, we are removing the option to "ask for every cookie" in bug 606655.

Removing Ask Me Every Time is not a good fix if you wish to protect your privacy. I have run into this "bug" before but it isn't endless. It is related to poor site design. Asking for a cookie for every object on the site and in many cases, asking to set the same cookie identifier for every object. I have had sites open hundreds of requests. They are rare and far in between. Now I have to block all cookies to protect my privacy. An even worse situation.

I absolutely agree with Robin. Saying the bug doesn't exist by deactivating this privacy features is kind of shameful. Since I'm on Gnome, I notice there is a trick that sometimes works: If the main window was prior maximised, I can make it small by detaching it from the screen's top. Then by moving around the window, I can see that behind the apparently blocking front-most dialog, there are other dialogs that become visible now as they stay fixed with the centre of the main window. It appears that the blocking is a GUI bug where Firefox expects the dialogs below to be confirmed and not the top-one, so clicking on the top-one's button has no effect, but now I can step by step diminish the bottom-dialogs by clicking on their respective buttons.

Due to bug 606655.