For all (Macs and PCs): I've been challenged to write in a different style than I've previously done, so please bear with me as I try to adopt a new style. This lesson will attempt to explain what cookies are, the difference between good and bad cookies and how you may wish to handle cookies. When you visit web sites - a sort of electronic handshake takes place. Your computer and the server the web site is hosted on exchange greetings. The server asks your computer who are you and your computer replies. All this goes on behind the scene. In other words you don't see this happening. A cookie is created on your machine when the server hosting the web page you are visiting wishes to leave your computer with an electronic 'thank you for visiting their site' card. This does not happen with all sites. In fact when you turn off your machine some of these cookies disappear for they are good only for the time you are on-line. These are called session cookies. What does a cookie look like? Here is a sample from my cookie bin: flash - 6 - www.hallmark.com/ - 1600 - 3547110016 - 29692304 - 1530318816 - 29618879 - * I've added the dashes between the bits of information stored in the cookie. This basically says I visited the Hallmark site plus some other information that makes sense to the Hallmark server and a programmer somewhere. If you've ever visited a company site once and then returned, you might get a greeting from the server saying 'Hi, Bob' or 'Welcome back, Carol', depending on what your name is. Companies use cookies to identify repeat visitors or to build a portfolio about you and/or your Internet habits. As it is with most things there are good cookies and there are bad cookies. Examples of good cookies - One real example of this is book companies that welcome you back after you've purchased a book, saying 'welcome back, Bob. I see you've purchased a book on fly fishing, perhaps you'd also be interested in looking at books about camping.' or some such message as the web site's server 'learns about you' as you purchase more items from the company. Banks and other institutions with which you exchange financial or credit card numbers use cookies to determine if you are who you say you are when you visit their web sites and logon to your account. Example of bad cookies - As I said previously there are cookies that build a portfolio about you and your Internet habits. Sometimes when you visit a web site, cookies are added to your machine without your knowledge. These cookies then report back to a server somewhere, every site you visit on the Internet until you delete the cookie doing such. Not only are these bad cookies, they are often referred to as Spyware - servers spying on you without your knowledge or consent. I think of these cookies as being the crumbs of the Internet. Here's why. Results of having cookies - If you have a lot of cookies 'crumbs' doing this reporting when you visit your favorite news web site, sports page, genealogy site, whatever - with each cookie doing its own reporting as you move from page to page, you can in fact slow the speed of your machine because it takes bandwidth that you could be using, to send out these reports. On newer, faster machines with fast connections it will take a lot of cookies to create this muck, but on a slower older machine, the effects take hold much quicker. What to do about cookies? There are at least 4 different methods of dealing with cookies. 1 - Slash and Burn - you can open your cookies folder every once in a while by going to the Desktop opening My computer, C: directory, Windows directory, Show files, Cookies OR c:/windows/cookies folder opening it and delete every file there, except the index file (because it won't readily let you do so). The downside of this is that you may delete good cookies in doing so. 2 - A variation of Slash and Burn - where you open each cookie by double clicking on it and determine by what you see, if you want to keep it or delete it. Not too bad unless you have a flock of cookies. The downside of this is that you may not understand what you are looking at and may also delete good cookies. 3 - Change the settings in your browser as to how it handles cookies. Internet Explorer - Tools - Internet Options - Privacy Tab - move slide bar to the comfort level you desire (explanations there to tell you what each setting does). (Mine is set at Medium High) Under Web Sites you can further exclude particular web sites. Netscape Communicater 4.5 (my version) - Edit - Preferences - Advanced - Cookies - (4 choices) - accept all cookies is the default. You can also check the box that says 'warn me before accepting a cookie'. (Mine is set to the default). 4 - Use a program to select out the bad cookies from the good cookies for you. Such a program will ask you when it's finished reviewing your cookie folder if you want to delete said selections - most likely you do. Of the 4 methods described, I have used all 4. For the novice, I highly recommend methods 3 and 4. Method 3 is of course most likely a one time setting whereas method 4 is something one should practice on a regular time schedule. For method 4, I highly recommend that you go to http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ and download Ad-Aware, the free spyware and cookie removal program, for your home computer. This will NOT work for Windows 95 users. After you download and install the program - - Start it up, - click first on the 'check for updates now'. (You will have to be on-line to do this). If there are updates available, they will download and you can then go through a couple of steps to finish that process up. - next select Start. - Select Next. This process is rather fast. Most likely you'll be amazed, if you have any cookies at all, just how much junk it will find on your system. When the test is done a little spider looking creature starts blinking on your screen. My test lasted about 5 minutes while it checked 73,000 files. It found 13 instances. - Select Next - this shows the results of the scan. Who the vendor/company is that placed the cookie on your machine, what type, category it is, and the location of the cookie on your machine. - Sometimes the boxes to the left have check marks in them, indicating that they will be deleted when one selects 'Next' sometimes it doesn't. When it is the later you will have to click each box and put the check mark in the box on the far left. - Select Next - a box appears asking you if you wish to delete the objects found. - Select OK. - Close program. At this point it wouldn't hurt to reboot your machine for a good clean start after removing the muck. After you've run this a few times, you'll begin to recognize familiar places that create spyware / cookies on your machine. Unless you really restrict your machine with method 3, most likely it's best to continue to use such a program as AdAware to keep your machine clean or these bad cookies or spyware. For further reading on this subject I also recommend the following site which gives information for specific browsers and how to change their settings for cookies (under How to Control Cookies). This site goes into even more detail regarding cookies. It is a British site. http://www.aboutcookies.org/cookiefaq.html Feedback welcome. Tim