What the heck are those Internet cookies anyway?

When you visit a Website for the first time, you may be required to enter your name and a password of your choosing. The next time you go to the same site, it already contains your name. You still have to type in your password, but you wonder how the site was able to identify whom you are.

The secret was a small file created by the Website that you visited and that was left on your own hard disk. It would inform the site about whom you were the next time you visited the site. If you visit a lot of Web sites that ask you to register and log in, the more cookies you are likely to have on your hard disk.

Initially, people did not like these Internet cookies -- as opposed to the Fortune Cookies in top Chinese restaurants -- because they thought these files took up a lot of valuable hard disk space. That is not the case because each cookie contains only a small amount of data.

Over time, people found clever ways to steal information -- such as your browsing habit -- from your hard disk by using the cookies. Then these cookies became a privacy issue. Advertisers used these cookies to find out which Web sites you visited most frequently, so they could tell what your buying preferences were. Then they could package the right promotional campaign to persuade you to part with your cash.

To find out where the cookies are stored on your computer, just use the Search utility on Windows. In older versions of Windows, cookies are probably stored in C:windowscookies. Now, once you have located the folder that contains all the cookies, will it be a good idea to erase all of them? Not necessarily. Many of the cookies will shorten the time to access certain Websites. If you visit a site for the second time, and you have deleted the cookie for the site, you will be asked to go through the entire registration procedure again, for example. If you use a dial-up connection, cookies can save you money.

If you have found the folder that contains your cookies, you can actually look inside the file. Just double click on any of the cookies, and you will see the content in a Notepad window. A cookie is not a program, it is a benign text file containing, perhaps, the ID number that the Web site has issued for you.

However, you might want an effective way to handle cookies. You can buy programs such as Windows Washer by Webroot Software (webroot.com) or Guard I.E. 3.0 from FailSafe Technologies, Inc. (guardwall.com).

Usually, however, you can tell your own browser to allow or to block cookies from the Websites that you specify. In Internet Explorer 6.0, for example, you can go to Tools, Internet Options, Privacy and Edit. Just type in the URLs of the Websites you want IE to block or allow. At any rate, a cookie is not really something to get overly worried about. -- Zatni Arbi