How to Delete Cookies

By eHow Internet Editor

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Cookies are text files that are automatically downloaded to your hard drive by Web sites to make Web browsing easier. If you have security concerns or feel the cookies are taking up too much space, you may want to delete them.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Cookies From Microsoft Internet Explorer

Step1

Close Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Step2

Search your hard drive for a folder labeled "Cookies."

Step3

Open the folder.

Step4

Note the list of text files with names of the form "user@sitename." These are cookies.

Step5

Select the cookies you want to delete (you may want to keep the ones from sites you visit often).

Step6

Press the Delete key to delete the selected cookies.

Cookies From Netscape Communicator

Step1

Close Netscape Communicator.

Step2

Search your hard drive for a file labeled "cookies.txt." This file contains all the cookies that Netscape has downloaded.

Step3

Select the cookies file.

Step4

Press the Delete key to delete the Netscape cookies.

Tips & Warnings

Unless you adjust your Netscape settings to reject cookies, Netscape will establish a new cookies.txt file as soon as you start browsing again.
Some sites require cookies to function properly. If you delete cookies, you may have to re-register with some sites.
You may notice difficulty in browsing some sites after you delete cookies.

Comments

Anonymous said

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on 8/8/2006 It's well worth deleting cookies as they seem to act as a breeding ground for spyware, which can be really problematic in some cases. The easiest way to find them is to search for *@*.txt using the Windows search - from there you can just delete them. You could also try using Mozilla Firefox, which can be set to automatically delete cookies and other personal information after each web session.

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