What are Cookies on your Computer - How to Delete Cookies that Steal Your Identity

Are you concerned about the computer cookies which steal your identity while browsing Internet? These tips will help you to understand clearly what are cookies on your computer and second part of this article deals on how to delete cookies which are harmful to your data security. Nowadays net privacy has become a global concern. The Internet is supposed to provide total secrecy, has become insecure since it is being infringed upon by ad-services which are equipped to go to any level to collect private information from net surfers. Browser Cookie is the tools which are used for achieving this objective on a computer. Any anti virus software or firewall and internet security doesn't delete these files.

Whenever you visit a website or web page, its web server places a cookie or two in your computer without your being conscious. They get stored in a file called cookie in one of the browser directories. Those files on your computer would contain your name, name of web server you visited and a thread of unsystematic looking characters which act as reference number for the website.

The next time you visit the same website or webpage, web server reads that file which is stored on your computer hard disk. Then it searches its own database for the stuff you had clicked in your earlier visits and gives information on the topics in which you are interested. Cookies, by themselves, do not create any privacy harms. The problem takes place when others get hold of access to details and get what details are stored. Therefore it is very important to know how to delete Cookies to make your information more secure.

Vulnerability takes place when these Cookies stored on a computer is shared with other websites. The web site you visited might enter into an agreement with another website for swap over of each other's collection of information. Certain websites like Nytimes.com and eBay.com gets your name, address and e-mail for registration with them and stores in cookies. A third party web server could be able to get hold of your personal details, which are stored in those sites by using the Cookies that are placed on your computer by these websites.

In Internet Explorer, there is a bug through which a third party web server can even see these files in your computer when you are surfing internet. It has been found possible for a third party website to access the records and discover out the identity of e-mail subscribers with ISPs who use Cookies to validate users e.g., Gmail and Yahoo etc.

One of the companies which made a big business out of consumer database has grounded an intense debate about internet privacy issues. A well known company has been gathering cookies derived user database over the past few years. It had stated earlier that it would protect the privacy of the users. It has a clientele of more than 20,000 websites. Each one of them use its ad-serving software. This software gathers and provides the company with information of all user activities in 20,000 websites, from a large database of 100 million files where this user wise information are stored.

The above example stresses importance of understanding what cookies are and importance to clear them from computer memory. Many techniques are available for preserving your confidentiality by deleting them. There are some settings in the internet browser to enable, disable or to prompt when a cookie is being set. I will be explaining them in detail in my next article, as I just wanted to concentrate this article on what are cookies on your computer. Hope this article helped you to know more about them.