It's bad enough that the amount of spam I get has increased by a factor of at least 5 times as much as a year ago. But what really gets my goat is that as I highlight an email to delete it (without opening it or reading it), the sender has it set up to put a cookie on my computer! I have my cookies set so that I get asked before any cookie is added, first or third party, so I don't get the cookie, but the NERVE!!!

There, that's off my chest.

By Trisa on Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 09:31 am:

Yes I am so sick of Spam as well.
I even have a spam blocker but it still does
not catch evryone.

By Cat on Saturday, October 16, 2004 - 10:00 am:

ROFL I thought you meant Spam, like fake ham! I was wondering WHY on earth the amount had increased by 5??? I thought, if you don't like it, don't buy it! I was also wondering if there was a recipe for Spam Cookies now. YUCK!!! lol

By Kernkate on Monday, October 18, 2004 - 11:20 am:

LOL Cat I was thinking the same thing,,,,spam cookies. EWWWWWW

By Robin on Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 01:21 pm:

Hi Ginny, please tell me how I too can set up my computer so that cookies can only be added if I allow them!!! I never knew this existed. I still forgot how to delete them too if you wouldn't mind sharing...thanks and sorry for your "spam cookies".

By Ginny~moderator on Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 04:33 pm:

Go into Tools / Internet Options / Privacy. Click the Advanced button. Click on the box to Override Automatic Cookie Handling, and Click the circle for Prompt. I also click on the square for always allow session cookies, as that keeps me moving along with MV, for example. What will happen is that each time a website or email wants to load a cookie you will get a popup window asking you whether you wish to allow the cookie. There is a box to click so that however you answer this time will always be applied so that if, for example, the first request you get is from Doubleclick, you can tell the program that you want them to always tell Doubleclick NO.

I manage to keep my cookies down to less than 50. I check every couple of weeks and I don't think I have had an unwanted cookie added in months.

As for deleting, simply find the cookie folder on your C Drive. Depending on what version of windows you are running, it may be in Windows or may be in some other place. Open it, select the ones you know are advertising, highlight them and delete. One trick is to sort by type of cookie - there are boxes at the top of the list for name, size, type, modified (date), etc. Click on type and you probably can delete almost all of one type at once. If you are deleting a whole batch, click on the first one, scroll down to the last one you want to delete and hold the shift key while you click and it highlights the whole section. If they are randomly placed on the list, hold the CTRL key each time you highlight and it will hold the highlighting for each one. Then just hit delete when you think you have them all.

Of course, run Spybot and AdAware every so often to be sure you get rid of any spyware, as some of these cookies are actually spyware and may be saved in a program file rather than in your cookie file.

By Robin on Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 10:09 pm:

Thanks, Ginny!