Don't Let Cookies Invade Your Computer

[Harry]

Almost every Web site you go to stores a cookie on your computer. Most of the time there is no reason in the world you need to have a Web site invade your computer and place a cookie on it. If you visit enough Web sites you could end up having thousands of cookies on your computer and not even being aware of it.

The best thing is to activate a prompt in IE that will tell you if a Web site wants to put a cookie on your computer and gives you the choice to do so and stop it. Obviously on sites that you have to register and have a password, you may have to allow a cookie but for all other sites, why should you allow them to put a cookie there. There are a lot of you that will be surprised and shocked at what is going on underneath your visits to Web sites.

You can set up the prompt for cookies in Internet Explorer by
1. Clicking on the the Tools menu and scrolling down to Internet Options.
2. In this Window, click on the Security tab and then click on Custom Level.
3. Then Scroll down to Cookies and click on the two Prompt buttons for Allow cookies that are stored on your computer and Allow per-session cookies (not stored).

[Edited by Harry on 02-05-2001 at 12:05 AM]

[DrZaius]

Hi Harry,

Good points. I totally disabled cookies when I got my new email address and I have yet to recieve one junk/spam email (knock on wood). The only times I turn them on is when I need them for an important site that requires them (online shopping, etc.) Just take a look at the kind of info. banner ads like DoubleClick can get with their cookies:

http://users.rcn.com/rms2000/privacy/banads.htm

[mairving]

Just beware if you enable the prompt for cookies, then you will have to answer the prompt about every minute that you are on the internet. A better alternative, if you have problems with cookies, is to download a cookie manager.

[Parangles]

Don't get obssessed with this and delete all your Cookies folder contents. You may cut off your access to your email account at Yahoo, etc. as I did, and had to contact Yahoo to get it restored. Are cookies used to verify our password/username at pcmec.com.? Not all cookies are evil
I guess although I am suspicious of all intrusions in my life.

[Kubie]

I use Cookie Viewer to selectivly remove unwanted cookies. That way "good" cookies are left to to do their job.
Carl

[Statica]

Thats why I like Nutscape a whole lot more than IE, there are a few work arounds if you use Nutscape to fool sites into thinking they are cookie-ing you...

For example in your profile directory you can delete cookies.txt [after closing netscape] and instead make a directory called cookies.txt
No more sites that prevent axs cos they cant write to your disk!

The same goes with a lot of adware programs, like Eudora 5.xx Pro etc, simply find out the adcache file, and if its a single file, delete and create a similarly named directory and vice versa

[Carl Price]

The best solution to this problem that I have found is a cookie manager called Cookie Crusher. You load it up with IE and it asks you for instructions everytime it receives a cookie from a NEW site. You then have your choice of four options. Accept, or reject the cookie, or always accept or reject the cookie. If you tell it never it will automatically reject cookies from that site whenever it receives them and you are never bothered with it asking again. If you merely accept or reject the cookie then you are asked each time that site sends a cookie

[DinerGuy]

Why not just use the custom settings in internet options of IE? I set the internet zone not to accept cookies and then set the safe zone to do so. As i log onto a web page that I need a cookie from, such as this one, I add it to the list of sites to accept cookies from. It beats being prompted for accepting cookies since each web, along with the add banners on it may prompt you for 6 or more cookies..

[Carl Price]

Originally posted by DinerGuy Why not just use the custom settings in internet options of IE? I set the internet zone not to accept cookies and then set the safe zone to do so. As i log onto a web page that I need a cookie from, such as this one, I add it to the list of sites to accept cookies from. It beats being prompted for accepting cookies since each web, along with the add banners on it may prompt you for 6 or more cookies..

Because Cookie Crusher works in other applications besides IE that puts cookies on your machine. For instance did you know that the latest version of Media Player also uses cookies that are prevented by Cookie Crusher. Also you are only prompted once per site. If you then say "never" it automatically rejects any subsequent cookies from that site.

[Edited by Carl Price on 02-16-2001 at 04:18 PM]

[Harry]

I've found now that I can't tolerate being warned every time a cookie wants to install so for the moment I just went to my Windows cookies folder and Internet Temp folder and deleted the whole damn cookie shabang. I can't stand having hundreds of cookies in my system sending back private information about my computer.

From what I understand too, some companies like Doubleclick even want to sell advertisers the name of the person whose computer they are monitoring. They may even have done so already without announcing it. If I delete cookies that are needed by serious Web sites I visit, they will reinstall themselves anyway when I go back to them.

Later I might try to use some of the other cookie filtering systems mentioned here but for now I'll just delete all the cookie files every few days.