Receiving Cookies and How to Delete Them
What is a Cookie? Cookies are small, encrypted files hidden on your
computer's hard drive that a Web site uses to store information about you.
Not all Web sites leave cookies on your computer. Here's what they do:
- A cookie left on your computer by a Web site will make it easier for you
to return to that particular Web site at a later time.
- The cookies will provide you an "authorization" to visit
selected pages at a Web site that other computer users are not authorized to
visit. As an example, this could be a page containing a special price list
just for it's members.
- Some cookies have time limits. For example, those time limits could be for
30 days, 60 days, or 90 days. A Web site could be promoting a special offer
that is valid for a certain time period. If you return to that particular
Web site within the time period, it will read your cookie and know that you
qualify for the special promotional price. As soon as the time limit has
expired the cookie deletes itself.
According to Microsoft allowing a web site to create a cookie on your
computer won't give them access to the rest of your computer. Microsoft Windows
has a folder titled "Cookies," so, all cookies sent to your computer
go to this Folder and are stored there.
You can eliminate or delete any or all of the cookies in this Folder, but...you
can't delete the Cookies Folder. If you delete the Cookies Folder, Windows
will continually provide you with lots of error messages until you reinstall the
Cookies Folder. Here's how to delete the cookies:
- Click on the start Button and scroll to Programs.
- Scroll to Windows Explorer and double Click.
- A dialog box titled "Exploring - [C:]" appears on the screen.
- On the left side of the dialog box is a box titled Folders.
- Click on the + sign just to the left of [C:].
- All folders are listed under [C:].
- Scroll down the list to Windows (notice the folders are alphabetically
listed) and click on it to highlight it.
- Click on the + sign just to the left the Windows folder. Additional
folders will expand below Windows.
- Scroll down to the Cookies Folder, and click on it to highlight it. All
the cookies filed in the Cookies Folder will be listed on the right side of
the "Exploring - [C:]" dialog box. You may need to expand the Name
column to view the complete file name of the cookies.
- To delete any of the Cookie files, click on the cookie name to highlight
it. Hit your delete key on the keyboard and the highlighted file will be
deleted.
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