Detailed Information

What are Cookies and are they safe?

The World Wide is designed to be an anonymous environment. For instance, when you connect to most Web pages, you aren't asked for a username and password the way you are when you log onto your Email account. Typically, when you request a page, the server that supplies the page takes little interest in who is asking, but just pushes that page back to you. This works fine the majority of the time, but sometimes it is useful for a web page to remember something about you. For instance, you may have gone to fill out a form on the Web and discovered that some of your information has already been filled in. Chances are that that was performed by a cookie.

The cookie stores a unique key on the person's computer so that they are immediately identified and you can give them a personal greeting and perhaps personalized suggestions for shopping. Amazon.com is a case in point. Cookies can provide information such as name of the visitor, preferences such as sports, music, books, time spent at your site, or other customized information.

The server records this information in a text file and stores it on the visitor's hard drive. At the beginning of later visits, the server looks for a cookie and configures itself based on the information provided. The cookie file can't be read from anywhere but the machine it resides on, so there is no security risk from someone getting a hold of this information.

Many people consider cookies an invasion of privacy since they can be used to collect information about a user or tract their browsing visits. Cookies are used to identify repeat visitors and track visitor behavior at the web page or site. Cookies are very similar to telephone caller id  in that they provide telemarketers with such relevant information as: the consumers name, address, and previous purchase payment record.

How to manage Cookies:

"To reduce the risk associated with cookies, and better protect your system, you should set up your browser not to accept cookies." http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org

Eliminating all cookies is both inconvenient and impractical since many good uses of cookies exist in the use of safe web sites. The following is the suggested configuration you should use to manage cookies:

For Internet Explorer version 6:

• Go to Tools
• Internet Options
• select the Privacy tab
• choose Advanced
• check the box "Override automatic cookie handling"
• For First-party Cookies – select: Accept
• For Third-party Cookies – select Block
• Check: "Always allow session cookies.

These settings eliminate most SPYWARE COOKIES.

Another help is the recommended SpywareBlaster program that adds a list of know, ad-tracking cookie sites to restrict them in both IE and Mozilla Firefox browsers.

For Further Study, see this site on Cookies and Privacy Settings:

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/cookies.htm