Can anyone explain cookies to me?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Every now and then my Yahoo email account slows down to almost nowt when I use Internet Explorer to access it, and I have a feeling that it may have something to do with cookies. So, for once and for all, can anyone explain to me what cookie settings I should have on my browsers to stop this kinda thing happening?

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:12 (twenty-two years ago)

This thread doesn't have the humor potential I was hoping for.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:16 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.aestheticdesign.com/images/cookiest.jpg

Yum.

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:19 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.northern-pine.com/songs/images/cookie.gif
Cowabunga!

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I leave cookies on but go through the list and delete the ones I don't want every so often. Deleting your yahoo one won't lead to much inconvenience - you'll just have to re-enter your username and password again.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:23 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.giantradio.com/cookie/ all_hell_cd_cover.jpg

― Alan Conceicao, Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:23 (twenty-two years ago)

rargh. okay. lets try something different.

http://www.gyeah.com/ezine/columns/columns/Top10Lists/images/cm_shapes.jpg

― Alan Conceicao, Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:24 (twenty-two years ago)

(many sites need them to work. I think you can set browsers to delete them at the end of each session, but I don't do this). I've never heard of them significantly slowing down access to a site, btw., but maybe I'm wrong.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:25 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.truestorybooks.com/cookiebook.jpg

― Alan Conceicao, Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Well what's happening is that it's taking a really long time to open certain pages through IE, and the images are not showing up, just a box with a red x in it. I thought this might be something to do with cookies, but if it isn't what is it?

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Pass. Try another browser and see if that makes a difference. Sometimes Yahoo is really slow, it has such complicated pages.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:29 (twenty-two years ago)

The problem with deleting cookies is if, like me, you have been relying on them for so long that you don't remember various log-in details. However, some cookies seem to be "tracking" cookies, which Ad-Aware doesn't like at all.

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 15:42 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.smokingwithstyle.com/stone_o_metertop.gif

How to Make - Crippling Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup pot-butter
1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2) Mix (by hand) the butter, sugars, and egg into a large bowl.
3) Combine the baking soda, salt, and flour.
4) Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir by hand.
5) Shape the dough into 1-inch balls and place them two inches apart on a greased cookie sheet.
6) Bake for 10-12 minutes or until light brown.
7) Hungry? Let cool for 3 or 4 minutes and grub.

Makes 20 cookies.

― andy, Wednesday, 17 March 2004 18:03 (twenty-two years ago)

http://isociety.lost-packet.com/images/cookie3.jpg
Me hungry.

― dave225 (Dave225), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 18:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Anti-spyware-software like Ad-aware and Spybot Search & Destroy detect and delete tracking cookies, which are cookies that are used to collect your browser habits and result in you getting even more spam. It's good to have some anti-spyware stuff on your system and run and update it often, because there may all sorts of nasties on your system which you don't know about slowing you down and ruining your surfing experience.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 18:16 (twenty-two years ago)

In my Internet Explorer settings I have set IE up to allow session only cookies (these are deleted when you close the browser I believe) and to reject all cookies that are stored for a longer period. Sites like eBay and lots of others spew out the tracking cookies Colin refers to (things like doubleclick and atdmt) so all those get rejected. Of course there are some sites that literally don't work without stored cookies enabled eg Paypal and this one (if you want to log in). So I just set it to 'prompt' (takes 10 secs) and then each cookie throws up a dialog box so I can accept it, eg if it's a legitimate paypal.com log-in thing, or reject it if it's a spyware type one. Then when I'm done I quickly and efficiently set it back to 'reject'. Although it sounds long-winded I've been doing it so long it's almost auto pilot-like. I have Ad-aware and I still run it occasionally but it never finds anything because of following the procedure I've just described.

I'm on IE 5.00. Later versions of IE (6.00 onwards I think) allow you greater control so you can reject only 3rd party cookies which are the ones to be avoided.

― David (David), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 18:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm using Opera, and they have a handy dandy cookie screener. However, I've been stumped as to how to keep out doubleclick. What server/domain do I need to explicitly reject to keep DC out?

― O.Leee.B. (Leee), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:16 (twenty-two years ago)

doubleclick.net I think. That's what it says for domain when you inspect them in IE.

― David (David), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:25 (twenty-two years ago)

There's pretty much no way that cookies are responsible for the slowdowns, unless some site abused them with some weird script, which obviously yahoo wouldn't do, and which I'm not sure would even be possible to do in a remotely effective way.

For what it's worth, I usually set my browser (which admittedly isn't IE, so I don't know what options are available there) to automatically reject cookies that aren't from the visited site. So if www.bunnieswithlongears.com tries to set a cookie from clickad.com, it'll automatically get rejected. I've also set it to always ask me if I want to accept cookies from a site or not, so when I first visit a site, I'll get a query-box about it, and canc lick "no, fokof!"... That way you can keep your cookies on sites like ILX and other places that require registration, and ditch all other sites.

But yeah, cookies are generally rather harmless, really, and there's really no reason to think they'll slow down your computer.

All a cookie actually is, is a file on your harddrive with a number or some sort of identity-text, which a site will look for when you log into it; it'll then take a look in its own databases for the matching identity and run whatever settings you have saved on their server. So it does very little on your actual system, but can of course be used for lots on other systems, including tracking your movements through sites (ie imagine if every site on the net checked for adbanner.com cookie, or something, and registered in a database what site you were at; eventually they'd have a good idea of your surfing-habits)

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Thursday, 18 March 2004 13:10 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.