Google and third party cookies

There's news out there that Google is setting third party cookies. Further investigations have shown that it isn't Google it's Firefox! See the deal is that Firefox uses prefetching. So when you do a Google search Firefox uses idle time to prefetch the top links in an effort to help speed your browsing. This might result in you getting cooking for sites you didn't go to. This stuff freaks people out.

Here are a few Firefox tips on the subject of cookies.

Delete cookies when you are done:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Privacy tab -> Cookies
Check "Allow sites to set cookies"
In the Keep Cookies drop down, change the selection to "until I exit Firefox"

This lets you have cookies and not leave a trail when you are done. Now if you revisit sites often and would like to keep cookies for those sites then click the "Exceptions" button on that page and enter the Address of the web sites and click "Allow".

Turn Prefetch off:

If this prefetch business has you paranoid you can disable it.

In the Firefox address bar type "about:config"
Look for a line called "network.prefetch-next"
Double click on the line to toggle it to "False"
Restart Firefox

Additional articles:

Search Engine Watch

Tumbling Duke

Firefox Prefetching FAQ