Internet cookies?

[flobadob]

What are cookies on the internet and what purpose do they serve? Also if I go in and delete or remove all the cookies I have in the computer will it mess up when I'm on the web? Does it matter if they are there or not?

[vehelpfulguy]

Suppose you visit a web site and register with them. You enter your name and other details. When you do that the web site saves a small file on your computer called a cookie.

It may contain your name and other details.

Next time you visit the site it may say "hello flobadob, welcome back".

It gets that information from the cookie stored on your computer.

Same as if you sign on to answerbank (or any other web site) and tick the "remember me" box. Next time you return it logs you on automatically and it gets that information from a cookie.

more....

[vehelpfulguy]

So generally cookies are very useful as it allows web sites to save information about your visits to their web site.

But of course there can be a negative side.

Suppose you visit Amazon and search for say a digital camera on their site. This information may be held on a cookie. Next time you visit the site Amazon may put adverts all over the place about digital cameras or books about photography.

You may get other targeted advertising about digital cameras on other sites as well if this informatoin is "sold on" to other people

These are called "tracking" cookies and they track your web habits, which some people think is rather intrusive.

So there are "good" cookies and "bad" cookies. But if you delete all your cookies you will delete the good and bad.

This can be a pain as it means to have to sign on again to all the web sites that need a userid and password.

However, deleting all your co0okies will not do you any harm, or mess anything up. You just need to make sure you know your userid and password for each web site you visit.

Some anti virus or spyware programs will list your tracking cookies for you so you can just delete them.

AVG V8 (which is free for home use) does this, so does Adaware (which is also free).

[vehelpfulguy]

I should say that if you do delete all your cookies, then start browsing the web for an hour, at the end of that time you will probably have 50 cookies so it could be said deleting them is a bit of a waste of time.

You can set your browser to tell you each time a web site wants to save a cookie, and while it is interesting to do that you will soon get fed up with saying OK and you will soon turn it off.

You can even set you browser to save NO cookies, but some web sites wont work without cookies turned on, and if you do have them turned off you need to logon to each web site every time you visit it.

Read about cookies here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

[flobadob]

Thanks for the info. I suppose I'll leave the little blighters well alone.

[LeMarchand]

Take a look at CCleaner. It's free and (amongst other things) it can delete all cookies except those you tell it that you want to keep.

[flobadob]

Yikes!!!!!!!!