Self Destroying Cookies for Firefox

Browser cookies are used by websites to store your login data and preferences, as well as to create personalized content depending on your surfing behavior. For instance, when you go to a website and express your interest in buying a particular item (visit its product page), that website will keep showing you the item and other similar ones.

Nowadays, all websites which rely on cookies are obligated to inform users about this when they first visit the page. This type of cookies are perfectly harmless, designed to simplify things by remembering your profile-associated info for the next time you return.

However, some websites use cookies stored by advertising services to follow you across the web and spam you with offers. It's understandable why some people object to this questionable behavior. Unless your browser's DoNotTrack feature is working properly, you can just cut the source: delete cookies every time you leave a website.

Self Destroying Cookies is a Firefox addon made for this exact purpose. It can automatically clear browser cookies as soon as you leave a page, displaying a notification message in the systray. Trusted websites that you frequently visit can be added to a whitelist to exclude them from the cookie removal job.

The addon is enabled by default right after it gets integrated with Firefox. As soon as close the current tab and leave the domain, you receive a message from the taskbar notification area with the number of cookies deleted by Self Destroying Cookies.

It's also possible to clear cookies manually and ask the tool to remove cookies from the current domain only after exiting Firefox altogether, keep third-party cookies, or never delete cookies from the current domain. A delay time can be set before the cookies are cleared, which especially comes in handy when Firefox is running slower than usual.

If you head over to the extension's settings panel, you can create a whitelist, export and import data. Moreover, you can change the default on-screen time for the systray notification or just disable these alerts, view the total of removed cookies of all time, and so on.

Taking into account its clear-cut interface and options, Self Destroying Cookies comes in handy to any Firefox users looking for a simple way to protect their privacy online.