Backing the Firefox List of Hosts Exemption for Cookies

Ever since I've started listening to the Security Now podcast, I've grown a lot more security- and privacy- conscious (which is a good thing). From the podcast, I've learnt that one of the easiest thing you can do to protect yourself on the Internet is to disable cookies by default, and allow only those from domains that you trust to be stored on your computer.

Being a Firefox user, I disabled cookies by default and set up an exception list to allow only hosts that I trust. Over time, this list has grown quite a bit. For whatever reason if I lose this list (either through an upgrade or a different computer), it can be quite inconvenient to redo the list again. Fortunately, I've found a way to back up the list.

[Update 12 Sep '08] Just found out from Mozilla's knowledge base, the list is now stored in the file permisions.sqlite, no longer in hostperm.1. Found this out when I was transferring my list.

The list of exceptions is stored in a file named hostperm.1 under your profile directory. For most users, there should only be one profile directory which is what I'll assume here.

Windows XP Users:

The file can be found in

C:\Documents and Settings<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles<profile_name>\hostperm.1

where <username> is the name of the account that you log in to your Windows XP system, and <profile_name> is an arbitrary string of characters which usually ends with .default

Linux Users:

This file can be found in this path under your home directory

.mozilla/firefox/<profile_name>/hostperm.1

Backing Up:

To back up the list, simply copy this hostperm.1 file.