A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer’s hard drive by a Web server. The text file stores personalized information about your visit to a Web site. The Web server can then read the text file the next time you return to the Web site and use the information to deliver personalized content. For example, there are several Web sites that deliver the latest news stories, but deliver local news when you access their site. Or those sites that provide you with the local weather forecast for your area.

You should also know the difference between a first-party cookie and a third party-cookie. A first party cookie is used to store information for the Web site you are currently viewing. Whereas a third party cookie originates from a Web site other than the one you are currently viewing. For example, the Web site you are currently viewing may use third party Web sites for advertising, and these sites may in turn use cookies.

Cookies are stored on your computer’s hard drive. They are stored in a folder called Temporary Internet Files. You can find this folder in the c:\documents and settings\\local settings directory. You can easily identify which files in this folder are cookies because the name looks similar to the following:

Cookie:username@website.com

If you need to delete a cookie, one way of doing so is to navigate to the Temporary Internet Files folder on your hard drive and delete the file. However, it is much easier to do so through Internet Explorer. To do so, use the following steps:

1. Open Internet Explorer, click Tools, and select Internet Options.

2. The Internet Options dialog box will appear.
3. If you want to delete all the cookies in the Temporary Internet Files folder, click the Delete Cookies button available from the General tab.
4. If you want to delete a single cookie, click the Settings button, and click the View Files button as shown in the figure.
5. This opens the Temporary Internet Files folder from where you can highlight a specific cookie and delete it.

Privacy settings in Internet Explorer allow you to control how cookies are handled on your computer. You have a number of different options from allowing all cookies to blocking all cookies. Internet Explorer has five different privacy levels to choose from.

• Block All Cookies: All cookies from all Web sites will be blocked. Any existing cookies on your computer will not be available to the Web sites that created them.

• High: Cookies without a compact privacy policy or those with a policy that uses your personal information without your consent are blocked. Cookies that were already on your computer before you installed Internet Explorer 6 can only be read in the first-party context.
• Medium High: Third party cookies without a compact privacy policy or those with a policy that uses your personal information without your consent are blocked. First party cookies without a compact privacy policy or those with a policy that uses your personal information without your consent are blocked. First-party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy and cookies that were already on your computer before you installed Internet Explorer 6 can only be read in the first-party context.
• Medium: Third party cookies without a compact privacy policy or those with a policy that uses your personal information without your consent are blocked.. First-party cookies that have a compact privacy policy which specifies that personally identifiable information is used without your implicit consent are allowed but deleted when you close the browser. First-party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy are only readable in the first-party context. Cookies that were already on your computer before you installed Internet Explorer 6 are also only readable in the first-party context.
• Low: First-party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy can only be reading the first-party context along with those cookies that existed before upgrading to Internet Explorer 6. Third-party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy or that have a compact privacy policy which specifies that personally identifiable information is used without your implicit consent are deleted when the browser is closed.
• Accept All Cookies: All cookies are permitted.

By default, the privacy level in Internet Explorer is set to Medium. This means that Internet Explorer places some restrictions on the use of cookies such as it blocks certain third-party cookies. You can customize the privacy level to suit your needs using the following steps:

1. Open Internet Explorer.

2. Click Tools and select Internet Options.
3. Click the Privacy tab shown in the following figure.
4. Move the slider up or down to change the privacy level.

   Keep in mind when you are customizing the privacy level, if you move the slider to block all cookies you may not be able to view some Web sites or take advantage of personalized features.

   Internet Explorer also allows you to manage cookies on a per-site basis. Any site specific settings you configure will override the privacy level configured on the Privacy tab (unless Allow All Cookies or Block All Cookies is selected). You can use the steps outlined below to configure per site privacy actions.

   1. Open Internet Explorer.

   2. Click Tools and select Internet Options.
   3. Click the Privacy tab and click the Edit button.
   4. From the Per Site Privacy Actions dialog box, type in the address of the Web site you want to manage.
   5. Click the Allow button to allow cookies from the Web site. Conversely, click the Block button to block all cookies from the Web site.
   6. Click OK.

   For more advanced users, you can override how the privacy level configured automatically handles cookies. For example, you may choose to allow all first-party cookies. You can configure the advanced settings by click the Advanced button from the Privacy tab within the Internet Options dialog box. The Advanced Privacy Settings dialog box allows you to Accept, Block, or Prompt first-party and third party cookies. A word of caution again, if you use the Prompt option, the prompts you receive indicating that a Web site is trying to copy a cookie to your computer may become excessive.

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