Eat your 'cookie'

If Mr. van Nidek (Your Letters, Nov. 11, 1996) is a MAC user, he can get rid of his "cookie". Getting rid of the "global history" -- where every click of the mouse while surfing the Net is recorded -- and "cookie" files won't help you. They will load, both of them, again into your hard disk the next time you connect.

Netscape puts those files into your hard disk in a folder into the system's preferences. I did as follows: Open the system folder, open the preference folder, then open the Netscape Preferences folder. (There you will find your "cookie," "global history," "bookmarks," "mail," "cache" and so on). Open your word processor application. Open the "cookie" and "global history" files as text. When opened, delete all the garbage in both documents.

Close everything, saving them as word processor files. Don't change their names or their location. Just leave them there. Select "cookies" by clicking on it. Open the file menu and click "Get Into". Lock the "cookie," thus making it a read-only file. Do the same with the "global history" file. (No one will be able to write on them, neither will they send you new ones to replace them). Go back to surfing the Net.

OSVALDO COELHO

Bandung, West Java