Delete cookies

What are the cookies?

How to see my Internet Explorer cookies?

How to delete the cookies?

Multi-page version of this article

The cookies are small pieces of information (text) that are created by Web sites that you are visiting and are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox or any other) along with the Web pages that you are viewing. Some of these cookies are saved to your hard disk and when you visit the same Web page again, your browser sends these cookies back to this Web site.

There are few general goals that are accomplished by the usage of cookies:

• To notify the Web site that you have visited it in the past. This information can be used to block some one-time services (for example Web pools, one-time promotional services, etc.).
• To remember your user name and password so that you don't need to enter them each time when you visit this Web site.
• To remember your personal information that is important to the Web site you are visiting. It can be your name, personal preferences, advertising information, etc.
• To show you a different ad each time when you visit the site or similar ads to ones that you have clicked in the past.

As you can see there are plenty of ways for cookies to threaten your privacy. Even if it seems that the purpose of some cookies is innocent they still reveal the fact that you have visited this specific Web site. Furthermore, the Web site can update the cookie every time you visit its pages, adding new usage information. Cookies remain on your computer as long as their creator decides (from few days to many years). Some cookies are automatically deleted when you close your browser (so called session cookies) but others can stay on your PC virtually forever.

You can use Mil Shield to delete the cookies while keeping some of them (some decent and useful Web sites don't work without cookies). As more and more people are becoming aware of the cookies, many Web sites started to use alternative methods to identify their visitors - Flash cookies (local shared objects), UserData records, DOM storage. Each of these methods is very similar to the ordinary cookies. Mil Shield cleans all these traces (selectively if you wish so) and it also cleans the content of index.dat files, history, temporary Internet files and many other tracks.

Download the free trial version of Mil Shield 7.2 3.65 MB - 25 sec with broadband or 10 minutes with dial-up link

The cookies of Internet Explorer are kept in special folder, which contains an index.dat file and one text file for each stored cookie. The location of this folder depends on the version of Windows.

For Windows 7 and Windows Vista:

If you have Windows 7 or Windows Vista then the cookie folders are in these locations (on your PC they can be on other drive instead of drive C):

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\Low\

Note, that you will have to change the settings of Windows Explorer to show all kinds of files (including the protected system files) in order to access these folders. Here is how to do this:

Start Windows Explorer. You can do this by clicking the yellow Windows Explorer icon on the task bar or, alternatively, by typing the words windows explorer in the search box of the Start menu and then clicking the Windows Explorer icon when it appears in the search results. Click the Organize button in the top left corner of the window and then select Folder and search options from the drop-down menu. This will open the Folder Options window, which is shown in the right. In this window, you have to click the View tab. In the Advanced settings tree, you have to turn on the option Show hidden files, folders and drives, and to turn off the options Hide extensions for known file types and Hide protected operating system files. Finaly, click the OK button to confirm your changes and close the Folder Options dialog window. After you have done viewing the Temporary Internet Files folder, you can restore the settings of Windows Explorer to their previous state.

For Windows XP and Windows 2000:

If you have Windows XP or Windows 2000 then cookie folder is in this location (on your PC it can be on other drive instead of drive C):

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Cookies\

If you have only one user account on Windows XP or Windows 2000 then replace <username> with Administrator to get the paths.

For Windows Me, 98, 95 or Windows NT:

If you have Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows NT or Windows 95 then cookie folder is in one of these locations:

C:\Windows\Cookies\
C:\Windows\Profiles\<username>\Cookies\

Note that on your computer the Windows directory may not be C:\Windows but some other directory. If you don't have Profiles directory in you Windows directory don't worry - this just means that you are not using user profiles.

In these folders you can see all persistent cookies that are saved to your user account. The names of the cookie files are in form username@hostname. For example the cookie name administrator@altavista[2] is showing that this cookie came from www.altavista.com and the current computer user was administrator. You can also open the cookie file to see its content but it most cases it will be encoded and not human readable.

WARNING! Even if you delete all cookie files from this folder most of the information for the cookies will not be deleted because it is saved in so called index.dat file. In some cases you can see the index.dat file in the cookie folder but even if you cannot see it, it is always there. You cannot delete this file because Windows and Internet Explorer keep it open all the time. The only way to get rid of the cookies for good is to shred the content of the index.dat file with a specialized privacy protection program - Mil Shield. It cleans not only cookies but also the content of all other index.dat files (yes, there are many other index.dat files - to learn where are they read the article Where are Index.dat files located?) along with history, temporary Internet files, recently used documents history, Google, Yahoo and Bing toolbars search history and many other tracks.

You can delete cookies by deleting all text files in the cookie folders on your computer. The locations of cookie folders are given in the previous chapter.

The problem is that even if you delete all cookie files from the cookie folders, most of the information for the cookies will not be deleted because it is saved in the index.dat file. In some cases you can see the index.dat file in the cookie folder but even if you can not see it is there. You can not delete this file because Windows and Internet Explorer use it all the time. The only way to get rid of the cookies for good is to shred the content of the index.dat file with a specialized privacy protection program - Mil Shield. It cleans not only cookies but also the content of all other index.dat files (yes, there are many other index.dat files) along with history, temporary Internet files, recently used documents history, Google or MyWaySearch toolbars search history and many other tracks.

Note that you can turn off the cookie support from your browser but this is not a good idea because most of the sites today require cookie support in order to work properly. After you delete all cookies you will have to enter your user name, password and other details every time when you visit a web site that needs registration and some sites may not work at all. Another good reason to keep some of the cookies is to avoid being suspicious when others notice that your cookie folders are always empty.

So it comes down to a choice between privacy and convenience of Web browsing. With Mil Shield you don’t have to make this choice. You can turn off the cleaning for the cookies from sites that don’t contain any sensitive information or are not considered forbidden in your environment.