Hi,

Since reboot yesterday on my laptop a problem with my personalised Google homepage has appeared. I lose all my custom settings everytime I open or refresh the page. I use IE7 and have 2 Google tabs.

Ad-Watch is removing my Google cookie. It shows up in Ad-Watch event list as:

Ad-Watch Logfile, exported on 14/02/2007
Total number of events:5
===============================================
14/02/2007 16:03:26 - Definitions file SE1R152 13.02.2007 loaded successfully.
Build:SE1R152 13.02.2007
Total Signatures :85099
Target Families :1048
Target Categories :6
CSI data Size :405552

File Size :3289774

===============================================
14/02/2007 16:03:26 - User preferences file loaded.
Ad-Watch preference file loaded.
Applying user settings
C:\Documents and Settings\HEJCB\Application Data\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware\awsettings.awc
Initialization complete.




===============================================
14/02/2007 16:03:26 - Sites file loaded.
Sites file loaded successfully.
C:\Program Files\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware SE Plus\sites.txt
Total entries : 3223





===============================================
14/02/2007 16:04:01 - Tracking cookie blocked.
Name: Cookie:hejcb@google.co.uk/
Size: 133 Bytes.
Hits: 1
UseCount: 0
Expires: 17/01/2038 19:14:08

Last Sync Time: 14/02/2007 16:03:40

===============================================
14/02/2007 16:04:01 - Tracking cookie blocked.
Name: Cookie:hejcb@google.com/
Size: 131 Bytes.
Hits: 1
UseCount: 0
Expires: 17/01/2038 19:14:08

Last Sync Time: 14/02/2007 16:03:54

===============================================


If I disable Ad-Watch (Unload it completely) and reset my preferences the Google pages work fine. As soon as I re-enable Ad-Watch the problem reappears.

The real problem though is as follows. If I leave Ad-Watch disabled, restart IE, reset my preferences so everything is correct, restart IE again, and then run an Ad-Aware scan (with scan for low risk/negligible risks enabled) it does not find the Google cookies. I cannot, therefore, tell the system to ignore these cookies! There is, as far as I can tell, no way to do this from the Ad-Watch window itself (which is foolish because it detects by far the most things). I am therefore stuck with the choices of turning off Ad-Watch cookie blocking or resettting Google settings continuously. I only use Ad-Watch for cookie blocking as its other settings are a bit too aggressive for me- resetting Google settings 20 times a day is a definite no-no so Ad-Watch has to go.

Obviously I find this unacceptable. I have happily used the paid for version of Ad-Aware for several years now and hope the engineers will fix this quickly. Additionally, I would imagine that Google would be very unhappy if they knew Ad-Watch is blocking their cookies unconditionally.

I notice that the build number in the log above lists yesterday's date: could this be related?

Thanks,

Chris

P.S. I am NOT a 'newbie'. This is the third time I have had to register on the forum in as many years. It even throws up an error on email validation telling me I am already registered!

I've got the exact same problem. Does anyone know how to mark the google personalized desktop cookie as safe?

Hi Sam,

Open Ad-Watch and click on Tools (bottom right) - select "Options" and scroll down to the "Blocking Options" section. Deselect (red cross) "Block Tracking Cookies".

Go back to your Google page to reload the cookie(s), then rescan and when it has been detected in the results page, select the Google cookie(s) (right-click) and add to your Ignore List.

When you have finished, remember to click the "Events" button in Ad-Watch to return it to the standard Event Log view.

Regards,

Spike

I would like to thank lavasoft for never replying to my post from 14/02/07 (but replying to Sam on the same day as he posted). Have I done something to offend you, other than purchase Ad-Aware in good faith? Additionally, if you read the original post you will notice that Sam has "the exact same problem" which means the manual scan did not mark the Google cookies as tracking cookies therefore making it impossible to mark them to be ignored.

In the meantime, however, an automatic update seems to have fixed the problem in my case. So I think the best advice for Sam is to make sure he is using the latest version.

Again, thanks for completely ignoring me...

Chris

hejcb,

If you read my profile, you would see that I am a volunteer, not an LS staff member...

You only have to turn the cookie-blocker off for one scan after reloading your Google cookies - mark them for Ignore, then turn the blocker back on.

It is quite simple - I'll leave Sam to make his own mind up.

Regards,

Spike

NB: Might pay to remember that this is a volunteer-based, peer-to-peer support forum, not the official Lavasoft Support Center available to licensed purchasers of Ad-Aware.