While cookies don’t generally represent a threat to you, anyone who accesses your system can view your cookies and find out where you’ve been. If you sell your computer to anyone, the same thing applies. Third party cookies – those that are put on your computer by the banner ads on the pages you’ve visited can also be a nuisance and represent a slightly greater threat than other cookies.
For all these reasons, you may want to either disallow cookies from your computer, or control which cookies you do allow. You may find it easier to simply delete all the cookies at regular intervals. All these things can be done simply and easily from your computer. All systems give you an easy way to manage or delete all the cookies, whether third party or not.
Deleting cookies is the easiest thing to do in Internet Explorer. Simply click on Tools>Internet Options and click on Delete Cookies. Click on OK when the box comes up asking if you want to delete all Cookies. To prevent third party cookies set your slider in the privacy section to medium high.
If you click on ‘delete all cookies’ then even those you’ve allowed will be deleted. If you want to delete only specific cookies than you need to double click on each one and then click delete.
To find the names of these cookies, click on Tools>Internet Options, click on the General tab then look for the Temporary Internet Files area. Click Setting and then View Files. To view the cookies, click on “Name” and scroll until you find the names that start with “Cookie”. Double click on the ones you want to delete and click on delete. Close the window when you’ve finished.
In Firefox, click on Tools>Internet Options>Privacy and Cookies. If you want to block only third party cookies look for “for originating site only” and check the box next to it. To allow or block certain other cookies you need to click on Exceptions. You need to enter the website addresses here, so you must have specific websites in mind – and know their URLs – to allow or block them. Check the appropriate box – e.g. block or allow, then click on Close.
To delete specific cookies you need to find them first and to do this, go to the Privacy tab (as above) and click on View Cookies. Select the ones you want deleted and click on Remove Cookie.
Opera is similar, but you can check the box against the wording “Delete new cookies when exiting” to prevent cookie build-up and tracking.
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