Are opt out cookies safe?

Between maintining a list of hundreds of opt out cookies that the site owners may ignore, and not to allow any cookies (except a few in a whitelist), which one is better from a privacy view point?

Thanks

 

I'd say that whitelisting is better from privacy point of view, but if you are going to allow only a few sites to store cookies, you might encounter difficulties (some sites require cookies, and you have to manually edit your whitelist every time when this happens).

 

The best approach is whitelisting, if you want to block most cookies, regardless of being first or third-party. This is my opinion, of course.

If you know before hand that your most visited websites/services need cookies, then allow them so. It may take you a a couple minutes or so, depending on how many services you have that need them. But, in the end is about asking yourself - Is it worth it?

Once you got your answer to that question, the rest is easy. Granted, I got no idea how easy/hard it is to whitelist cookies with Firefox.

 

AFAIK, they are safe, as they're not supposed to store / give out any personal data. They just tell the sites "don't set a cookie."

But not all sites honor that - it's completely voluntary on sites' part.

If you look at the sites listed on an opt out list like the Beef Taco addon, most sites (or services, like data mining / trackers) aren't ones you'd want to set cookies, anyway. But, you always have option to white list any that are on the list.