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Sat 19 May, 2007 07:06 am
Concerned about tracking cookies? IE has a neat way of handling them, although you have to be familiar with the innards of the operating system to even be aware of it.
I found this article in PC World. First thing that I did was to use my spyware scan to remove any of the cookies that I didn't want. I did not want to remove all my cookies, because I find some of them useful. For instance, I don't want to have to sign in every time I access A2K. Then I did what the article advised. I can see the difference already. There was one site that I use often. There was always an ad which appeared after I closed the site. No more!
Quote:A cookie is merely a small file that a Web site puts on your PC to identify you, or to store information about you or your computer, such as your IP address. The good ones save you the trouble of logging on to the site on return visits, a big help if you use subscription news services such as that of the New York Times.
The bad cookies are placed by ad companies that pay for the right to place advertising on the sites' pages (some sites also leave their own ad cookies). These files track your visits to pages that display their clients' ads (or their own), and they may tailor the ads you see to your browsing history.
Over time, cookies can reveal your browsing habits, though standard ad cookies, like those that DoubleClick uses, can't attach a name to a specific surfing trail.
That means, if you wipe out your cookies as soon as you close your browser, the ad networks never get a chance to track your surfing from session to session.
Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and Firefox 1.x and 2 have good cookie-handling procedures. IE lets you keep first-party cookies (left by the site you're visiting) but block those from third parties: Select Tools, Internet Options, Privacy, Advanced. In the Advanced Privacy Settings dialog box, check Override automatic cookie handling (see FIGURE 1). Under 'First-party Cookies', select Accept; under 'Third-party Cookies', choose Block. Ignore the session cookies option. Click OK twice.
http://www.pcworld.com:80/article/id,130798/article.html
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