That’s How the Computer Cookies Crumble

There has long been a debate raging about internet privacy issues since computer users became aware of “cookies”.
On one had cookies are good because they help users navigate better by leaving a trail for the user to go back to. On the other hand some cookies can enable a company to see your hard drive and track where the user goes.

Cookies are a piece of text that a web server stores on the users hard drive. Cookies allow a Web site to store information on a user’s machine and later retrieve it. The pieces of information are stored as name-value pairs. The cookie allows the web server to track a person who has been to their website by code. Another thing that cookies can be used for is allowing another computer user to track where you have been on the web. These days there is a growing debate about employers using the information to see what their employees have been up to. Of course the largest concern for everyone right now is the governments’ use of tracking cookies on personal machines.

So what if you don’t want to be tracked. The most common place for them to reside is in a directory called c:\windows\cookies. You can go into this area of your hard drive at any point, select all of the cookies and delete them. This doesn’t get them completely off your system however; you must delete them out of your recycle bin as well. Taking this action once a week or even once every few days will keep the cookies off your system but if you really want to ensure that cookies are deleted off consider purchasing a cookie removal program. These programs run once a week or once a day depending on what you want to do and wipes out the cookies. Some of these programs can be expensive however and if you take the time to set up your system tools in Windows, your regular system will clean them on a regular basis too.