On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Jens Alfke <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:snej@google.com">snej@google.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im"><br>
On Aug 31, 2009, at 3:11 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
We can't treat cookies and persistent storage differently, because<br>
otherwise we'll expose users to cookie resurrection attacks. Maintaining<br>
the user's expectations of privacy is critical.<br>
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The fact that local storage can be used as a type of super-cookie doesn't mean the two are the same thing. Yes, obviously if I give a website permission to put 50MB of stuff on my disk, it can use 1k of that as a type of cookie if it wants. That's just one of many reasons why user agents should require user approval for letting a domain access local storage.<br>
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That does not mean that the "Delete Cookies" menu command should also delete local storage. Users often delete cookies to resolve login issues (I've had to do this with Google websites several times). Conflating the two can lead to disasters like "I told you to delete my COOKIES! Not my EMAIL DRAFTS that I was trying to log in to send!"</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>Agreed. </div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="im">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
So I've removed the text that says that local storage could be user-critical.<br>
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That's going to come as a shock to developers who were planning to use it for user-created data (whether drafts of content to be pushed to the cloud, or strictly-local documents.) Without this, the safe usage of local storage diminishes to a download cache.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, this is pretty disconcerting since there's been OVERWHELMING support for LocalStorage being treated as user-critical on this thread.</div></div>