Erase Browser Cookies

Have you ever bought something from a website that required a login, like Amazon.com? When you come back to that website days later, you are greeted with a phrase like “Welcome back Jane!” in the top of the web page. How did the website magically remember your name?

Simple - the website used a type of file called a Cookie. Cookies are little files that websites write and store on your computer. Every time you visit a certain website, it will look for its cookie on your hard drive. It uses the information stored within the cookie to know your name, your shopping preferences and other information about you.

From the above example, it’s easy to see why cookies can also be a problem; anyone who looks at this folder can see exactly where you’ve been.

Are there some sites you visit that you'd like to keep private?

One way to maintain your privacy is to delete cookies. You could go through your hard drive and Options menus and delete cookies by hand, but unless you are extremely experienced in navigating the file structures of your computer, chances are you will erase something important by accident. And even if you successfully deleted these files by hand, Internet Explorer keeps another file called “index.dat”, that is stored in several locations on your PC. This file keeps a total record of every website you visit. And this file is locked, so you can’t delete it by hand.

PC Confidential makes it easy to protect your privacy and erase cookies from your computer, including the locked index.dat file.

Simply open PC Confidential and:

---

1. Click on the Erase My Internet History button (on the left hand side of the screen).
2. If you’d like to Erase Browser Cookies for Internet Explorer, AOL or Secure IE, check the box marked Scan Browser Cookies
3. Then choose one of the following options:
   • All Sites - Choosing this option sets PC Confidential to erase all cookies.
   • All Except Trusted Sites - In your browser, you can categorize websites based on how much you trust them. If you choose this option, all cookies from Unclassified Sites and Restricted Sites (Browser Security: Medium and Browser Security: High) will be erased. This option is helpful if you have a site you visit frequently and want to easily access it from the pull-down menu in your Browser Address Bar.
   • Restricted Sites Only - Choosing this option sets PC Confidential to erase all cookies from sites that you have classified as Restricted Sites (Browser Security: High).
4. If you’d like to Erase Browser Cookies for Netscape, Firefox or Opera, check the boxes marked Scan Netscape, Scan Firefox and Scan Opera.
5. Once you have made your choice, press the button labeled Scan Now and your Cookies will be scanned.
6. Once your Cookies scan is complete, a Privacy Report will appear with your results.
7. To delete, press Delete All

Stop:

---

If you’d like to stop scanning your Internet History selections, simply press Stop.

My Results:

---

After you press Scan Now, you’ll notice a scrolling list in the My Results section. This is a list of everything that is being scanned (in this case, the results could include browser history, browser cache, browser cookies and search history). Once the scan is complete, you will also see a total number of scanned results.

Would you like to automatically delete your Browser Cookies?