Cookies
Question: How do I turn off cookies. Please explain cookies to me.....
Anonymous
Answer:Cookies are small files (or entries in one big file) on your computer that a web site uses to pass information that you supplied on one web page on the site to other web pages on the same site. This is one of the three ways (and the easiest) to pass information between pages on the site and is the only way that information can be passed from one visit that you make to the site to the next visit that you make to the same site.
Cookies are not readable by other sites or other computers, they can only be read by web pages on the same site as created them in the first place. Unless your private information (such as credit card number) is stored in the cookie itself (instead of in a database on the server where it belongs) there is usualy no risk in having first party cookies active.
If a web page contains ads that are loaded directly from another site then that other site also has the ability to write cookies which can then be read by any other page displaying ads from that site. Such cookies are called third party cookies and these are the ones that you will most likely want to turn off, cookies belonging to the actual web page itself (first party cookies) usually perform useful fdunctions and turning them off may make the site unusable.
Exactly how you turn off cookies depends on which web browser and/or firewall that you are using.
- In Internet Explorer you need to go into Internet Options from the Tools menu and then to the Privacy page. The setting you will want to use is medium.
- In Netscape you need to go into Preferences from the Edit menu and then into the Privacy & Security section and then Cookies. Select Enable Cookies for the originating web site only.
- In Opera go into Preferences from the Tools menu and then select Privacy. Set third party cookies to Refuse all cookies.
I actually have all cookies allowed in my web browsers but have disabled third party in my firewall software.
