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how to clear cookies?

I went to Safari, clear cache. Is that the same? I think I recall briefly asking the rep (when I called the 800 apple care number) how to clear the cookies, but forgot what he told me. How do we clear the cookies? Thank you!

Message was edited by: Christine Altieri

Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Dec 3, 2010 5:35 AM

Reply
15 replies

Dec 3, 2010 6:55 AM in response to thomas_r.

*"Legislators Support Internet Privacy, but Question How to Do It"*

...But Susan Grant, the director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America, said that the type of all-encompassing surveillance becoming increasingly common online would rarely be tolerated.


“If someone were following you around in the physical world — tailing you and making note of everywhere you go, what you read, what you eat, who you see, what music you listen to, what you buy, what you watch — you might find this disturbing,” she said.


“On the Internet,” she added, “even if the tracker doesn’t know your name, you are not anonymous.” She pointed to technology like so-called cookies and other persistent, digital identifiers that “are essentially personally identifying information.”



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/technology/03privacy.html?hpw

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?pagewanted=print

Thomas, I'm not looking for an argument, but kindly explain how cookies play no role in any of this.

Dec 3, 2010 7:01 AM in response to WZZZ

The only way that a cookie can be used to track you across multiple sites is if it is set by an ad hosted on multiple sites that you visit. Even then, it is not able to do anything but identify that your computer has visited those sites - the ad cannot get access to information from other cookies. Further, you can block those cookies by simply going to Safari -> Preferences -> Security and setting the "Accept cookies" setting to "Only from sites I visit."

Don't rely on mainstream news media for technically accurate information on security issues. (Or any technical issue, for that matter.)

Dec 3, 2010 9:02 AM in response to WZZZ

http://epic.org/privacy/internet/ftc/DCLKcomppr.html


If you followed my advice regarding Safari's security settings (or the equivalent in another browser), then DoubleClick would not be able to follow your surfing activity at all, since you would not be accepting their cookies. Of course, if you click an ad and then provide personal information, which is the only way such a company could actually obtain that information, that is completely outside the realm of cookie issues. Cookies are not the villains they are made out to be.

I find it a constant source of amazement that people have no qualms signing up for a "rewards" card from a grocery store, gas station, book store, etc - which track your activities in a much more invasive way - and yet they freak out over cookies that can't store any personal data that you didn't give them voluntarily.

And then there are Flash Cookies, which hardly anyone knows about or suspects.


Flash cookies wouldn't be cleared by clearing cookies anyway. But again, barring any security vulnerabilities with Flash (which are certainly not unheard of), the same should be true of Flash cookies. And, of course, I always recommend [ClickToFlash|http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash> so you only load Flash that you actually want loaded.

Dec 3, 2010 11:58 AM in response to Christine Altieri

For Safari
Safari Cookies
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31018/safari-cookies

I think Firefox gives more options to handle cookies, cache and more. Some of the privacy and security extensions for Firefox, then check your browser and what web sites load.

There just has to be a general purpose cookie monster utility that will flush all but what you want to keep, from any and all of your browsers, whenever you login to your account, as well as options to remove and delete when you close Firefox.

Firefox extensions:
NoScript
BetterPrivacy
Shostery
Hosts
FlashBlock

I would have expected or thought that Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner world but isn't mentioned. Handy but don't recommend using in automatic mode either. Same for Onyx. If you used Windows, you probably saw CCleaner handle all browsers cookies from one place as well as temp files.

http://www.northernsoftworks.com/slccfeatures.html

Cocktail is another of these general purpose, use at your own (ie, always have a good backup strategy like bootable backup clone).
http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php

how to clear cookies?

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