Hi all,
Recently (in the last few months) NIS 2013 has started deleting ALL cookies in IE10 during a monthly scheduled scan, not just the adware/tracking cookies.
The History tab in NIS only shows the advertising-related tracking cookies deleted during the scan, it doesn't show all the others that were also deleted (inc. useful ones like banking IDs, forums, etc).
The advice I received from chat support was how to turn Cookie scanning off - this isn't a proper solution!
Any ideas?
This is a known issue and there are numerous threads in the NIS Forum on the subject. The problem doesn't exist with IE9; it started with IE10 and I first commented about the login cookie removal issue back in March. IE10 probably saves cookies that contain login information, etc. a little differently and NIS hasn't been updated to accommodate those differences. I suspect the cookies that contain this information are being swept up in that catch all called "Orphan Cookie Removal"!
Whether it is a Microsoft or Norton problem might be a point to argue, but it is painfully obvious that Norton appears to be ignoring it or can’t figure out how to fix it while many of us are frustrated that the problem remains unfixed!!!! Makes you wonder what else is broken and is creating a security vulnerability that we don’t know about!!!! I no longer allow the Norton Scans to remove Tracking Cookies. My work around is to set the Tracking Cookie Scan to "Ask Me" or "Ignore" and run CCleaner to remove cookies periodically. CCleaner lets you exclude specific cookies where NIS apparently doesn't. In NIS if you click "Exclude" after a Tracking Cookie Scan and Report; all it does is change the Tracking Cookie Scan setting to "Ignore" and nothing is reported after that on subsequent scans.
This problem existed in NIS 2013 and still exists in NIS 2014 (Version 21).
Good luck; there are a number of us frustrated by this issue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi crobinuk:
Welcome to the Norton forum.
Could you please confirm that your IE10 browser is not configured to automatically delete cookies on exit (Tools | Deleted Browsing History)?
Also, do you use any disk cleaners like CCleaner or Windows Disk Cleanup that could be wiping your cookies?
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MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * Firefox 24.0 * IE 9.0 * NIS 2013 v. 20.4.0.40
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
Hi crobinuk,
It's a problem with IE 10, no matter your settings are, all cookies will be deleted when NIS finds one it needs to remove.
However, you can set NIS to ignore particular cookies, from the main GUI, for websites you need to preserve the cookies.
Let's hope the issue will be fixed in IE 11.
The issue does not exist in IE 9.
Hope this helps,
Best regards,
Thanks for the reply!
I can confirm that "Delete browsing history on exit" is unchecked (ie. default setting) and I don't use other cookie-cleaning software that would remove cookies. Cookies are only ever missing after Norton has reported that it has "resolved security threats" in the notification window upon next login.
Have upgraded to NIS 2014 and issue persists. As other commenter has suggested, problem only started a few months ago. Other browsers don't seem to be affected.
This morning Norton reported that it had resolved potential security threats - 13 threat detections show in the Performance graph, but clicking on "View Details" shows "There are currently no items to view in this category" under Resolved Security Risks. But yet ALL my cookies are gone. Again. Even the cookie remembering my user id on this forum. Frustrating.
Thanks for the reply!
Still sounds like a NIS issue to me. Problem only started a few months ago - has IE10 released an update which deals with cookies differently since March?
Thanks for the contributions so far.
Any official solutions from Norton? (Do we know if Norton is aware of the problem? Tech Support went through the problem on LiveChat and suggested I post here as they didn't have a solution in their standard operating procedure.)
The other similar threads I saw on here re: indiscriminate cookie deletion that were marked as "Resolved" involved disabling Norton's Cookie scanning... (This is a bit like suggesting uninstalling Norton altogether - sure, it will get the job done, but isn't really a "solution").
Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance!
crobinuk wrote:The other similar threads I saw on here re: indiscriminate cookie deletion that were marked as "Resolved" involved disabling Norton's Cookie scanning...
Hi crobinuk:
I have IE9 on my Vista OS (although Firefox is now my default browser) and wasn't even aware that a NIS Tracking Cookies Scan could delete ALL cookies in IE10 until I read Buck115's message # 2. Like you, I scanned related threads in the forum and couldn't find a better solution than to disable the Tracking Cookies Scan in the NIS settings.
My best advice would be to go with Buck115's suggestion and use Piriform's CCleaner to handle all your cookie cleaning. I have two important cookies that kept getting wiped when I cleared my browser history (Google Search settings and the Globe and Mail's financial web site) and I found that it was fairly simple to create exceptions in CCleaner for these cookies. The CCleaner support article here has instructions on how to manage cookies, and a new feature called Intelligent Cookie Scan (see Option 3 of that support article) will automatically create exceptions for persistent cookies for popular sites like mail.google.com and login.comcast.com if you want to try it.
In my case, the NIS Tracking Cookies Scan has never caused a problem with my IE9 or Firefox browsers, but just to be safe I have this option set to "Ask Me" so that I can double-check the tracking cookies NIS is trying to delete before I hit the Fix button.
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MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * Firefox 24.0 * IE 9.0 * NIS 2013 v. 20.4.0.40
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
