Cookies (IE7 – XP)

Topic

New Reply

[indent]

---

that site tried to place 17 (seventeen) cookies!

---

[/indent]

Re Hans post – post 710,899

I’m curious to know the importance of Hans statement? I knew (prior to my reading within the last few hours) nothing about cookies. The statement ‘suggests’ that Hans knew of this prior to allowing / not allowing these to bury themselves into the HD. Is this software of some sort that allows you to see what’s about to happen, giving you the ability to stop it?

Please excuse my ignorance, I’m learning as I go along!

I have just installed and run CCleaner. My security is pretty lax, I’m interested to know what is the ‘norm’ in this area?

Reply | Quote

Replies

Cookies are not intrinsically good or bad.

Many websites place a cookie on your harddisk to store preferences. For example, this website, Woody’s Lounge, uses a cookie to remember your logged-in status, so that you can visit the Lounge without logging in each time. This is a perfectly acceptable use of cookies.

Some other websites try to place cookies for yet other websites on your hard disk so that their owners can keep track of your surfing behavior. Although this is not directly harmful, many people don’t like this.

Internet Explorer lets you specify how you want to handle cookies in the Privacy tab of Tools | Internet Options…
If you click Advanced, you can specify whether you want to allow direct cookies from a website that you visit, and whether you want to allow a website to place a cookie for another website. I allow the first and forbid the latter.
You can also specify exceptions for individual websites.

There are applications that let you manage cookies in more detail. Whether you want to use such a program is a matter of personal preference. I don’t use one, but there are many Loungers who do. If you search Google for cookie manager you’ll find many options.

Reply | Quote

Hans, Thanks for your detailed explanation. I am still curious to know however, ‘what prompted you to know’ that that site attempted to place 17 cookies, and more to the point, why any site would need to place 17 cookies?? Presumeably, 16 of these must be on behalf of third parties??

I will certainly be banning third party cookies, I don’t like the thought of that at all.

Reply | Quote

Since I’m blocking third-party cookies, I got a “Privacy Report” icon in the status bar of Internet Explorer when I visited that site (the “red eye” in the screenshot below). Double-clicking on the icon opened a list of blocked cookies – most of them third-party cookies.

Reply | Quote

Will keep a lookout for that in future, Thanks again Hans..

Reply | Quote