DATE is an attribute of the cookie that determines the length of time that the cookie persists on your computer. If an expiration date does not exist, the cookie is stored in memory only and expires at the end of the current session. Persistent cookies are stored in different places on your computer depending on which web browser and browser version you are using. Those cookies that have a DATE attribute that is in the future are persistent cookies and are saved in files. Setting the date for existing cookies to a date in the past causes the cookies to be deleted. You can open or edit cookies with a text editor and delete cookies that you do not want to keep or delete the file itself to remove of all of the cookies. Internet Explorer stores persistent cookies in separate files named with the user's name and the domain name of the site that sent the cookie. For example: yourname@sexsite.txt.

 

You will love SmartProtector - Internet Eraser if you want to automatically delete cookies and all other traces of your Internet activity.

 

If you want to manually delete cookies, the following material provides more specific information for their locations.

 

The cookie files are stored in the \Windows\cookies or in \Windows\profiles\userlogin\cookies directories, where userlogin is replaced with the user's login name. If your operating system directory is not named Windows, such as Winnt for Windows NT, then open that directory instead of the Windows directory. You can delete cookies saved there that you do not want to keep.

 

You can open any of these cookies to determine their origin and what information they contain. For example, the following examples are the contents of one of the Internet Explorer cookies files. Counter_Cookie 7 www.myplace.com\mysite\ 0 2750889984 29260821 2802449904 29177426 * This particular cookie file was named ned@mysite.txt. The file name is composed of the username (ned) and the last part of the domain (java). The text (Counter_Cookie) is the name of the cookie and 7 is its value. The URL is the domain attribute and the numbers contain the date and other cookie attributes. This particular cookie implements a page counter that lists the number of times you have visited a particular page. Whenever you visit that page, this cookie is sent along with the page request. The server then knows that this is the eighth (7 + 1) time you visited the page and inserts that number into the Web page. It then increments the value of the cookie from 7 to 8 and sends it back to the browser along with the requested page. The new cookie replaces the old one; the next time you visit, the number 8 is sent to the server. See the example in the "Cookies, VBScript, JavaScript, and Java" section below to see this page in action.

 

Except index.dat cookies and history, other traces of your Internet activity can include Temporary Internet Files, such as caches and other media files; the Recent Documents list; the dropdown URL list from Internet Explorer; URL Autocomplete, and so forth. SmartProtector deletes all these items. Click the following link to see how this scenario looks when you delete the history.