Deleting Cookies Using Internet Explorer
Deleting Cookies off your computer is not only helpful in speeding up your computer and freeing space on your computer but it is also essential for your personal peace of mind and information security.
The following is classified ROUTINE MAINTENANCE and this should be done every 2 weeks for moderate users, and at least every week for heavy computer users. Of course these time frames are my PERSONAL recommendations and are definitely not cast in stone!
You can do them MORE OFTEN or LESS OFTEN if you wish. Doesn’t hurt. But NOT doing it will just fill up some of your hard drive with garbage.
I am sure that at times you have noticed that your surfing on the Internet has slowed to a snails crawl. Most of the reason for this is listed in this section and by doing the cleanup listed here, you are sure to experience a GREAT increase in surfing speed.
When you are connected to the internet, your computer is keeping a record of your online activities called “Internet History”. Along with that, your computer picks up things called Cookies.
Cookies
Cookies help the sites that you visit to gather information about you. Yes this can be a scary prospect, specially if you are a wee bit paranoid about “Big Brother”. Most of the websites that you visit do have your best interest at heart in that they use these cookies to try to better your experience online.
The way they work is like this. The first time you visit a site, your computer picks up a cookie and stores it on your computer. Then if you should happen to return to this site, the site refers back to this cookie and updates its log of where on their site you visited, among other information as listed below.
If you thought that you were anonymous when you went to www.sextoysinc.com because you were just looking and didn’t sign in with them, THINK AGAIN!
Your faithful computer is a tattle tale of sorts! And the site server at www.sextoysinc.com could have a file larger than your medical record on their end, depending on how much time and how many visits there you have made there.
Some things like the following are passed through cookies…
- IP Address – this is like your street address but relating to your internet.
- Referring Page – this is the page that you just came from.
- Browser and Operating System – Internet Explorer 6 on XP if that is the configuration of your system.
- Screen details – what your resolution is so that they can properly display their website on your monitor.
- Pages viewed – what pages on their site you visited.
Personally, I leave my “accept cookies” turned on so that I am not restricted in the websites that I can go to. But I REGULARLY delete all my cookies to try to preserve my privacy. If you turn them off totally, you may not be able to view some websites that require cookies to be accepted.
For the average computer user though, doing the following will work just fine.
- While in Internet Explorer, click on the Tools button on the top toolbar.
- A drop down menu will show. Select the Internet Options choice and a window like the following will pop up…
To delete your cookies, just press the “Delete Cookies…” button in the center of the pop up as shown in the image above. Another small window will come up asking you to delete all the cookies or cancel. You decide.
If you have a lot of cookies, it might take some time to delete them.
When done, you should notice a substantial increase in your surfing speed.
