If cookies are so much of a nuisance
why were they developed in the first
place?
The first batch of cookies were originally
cooked up as simple mechanism to help make
it easier for users to access their favorite
Web sites without having to go through a
lengthy process of identifying themselves
every time they visit. For instance, upon your
first visit to a given site, you may be asked
to reveal your name and perhaps even some
personal or financial information required to
gain access to that site in the future. The
site will then place a cookie containing this
information on your system and when you
return it will request information based on the
cookie to determine who you are and
whether you have authorization to access
the site.
Unfortunately, the original intent of the
cookie has been subverted by some
unscrupulous entities who have found a way
to use this process to actually track your
movements across the Web. They do this by
surreptitiously planting their cookies and then
retrieving them in such a way that allows
them to build detailed profiles of your
interests, spending habits, and lifestyle. On
the surface, this practice may seem harmless
and hardly worth fretting over since the
worst thing most imagine is that corporate
concerns will use this information to devise
annoying, yet relatively innocuous advertising
campaigns, targeted towards specific groups
or individuals. However, it is rather scary to
contemplate how such an intimate knowledge
of our personal preferences and private
activities might eventually be used to brand
each of us as members of a particular group.
But remember a site only knows what
information you have entered. Not all cookies
are bad, they can also provide useful
functions on the web.
Stopping Cookies In
IE3 + Netscape
Stopping Cookies In Internet Explorer
3.0
Internet Explorer 3.0 no longer stores
cookies in a single file, but each cookie as
a separate file in the windows\cookies
directory, this makes it harder stop
cookies, but if you want to stop individual
cookies, like the double-click cookies, you
can corrupt the cookie by deleting the
contents then saving the file and setting
its attributes read-only, hidden and
system, this means when you log onto a
site which has set that cookie it cannot
read any information off your cookie or
give you a new one. Like in netscape you
can set IE to alert you before accepting
cookie, to do this go to the View menu |
options | advanced tag and click on "warn
before accepting cookies"
To end the nuisance of clicking on 'no' in
the warning popup box to stop cookies;
download the new Netscape 4. (free of charge)
and disable cookies from the
Edit menu | preferences | advanced | and
click on 'disable cookies'.