Cookies are simple text files created by the Web sites you visit. Some cookies are very useful and store login information for the Web sites you visit often, as well as the date of your last visit (so the site can flag newer information for you), your favorite search terms, and so on. These cookies are worth saving. Other cookies really only benefit Web advertisers and can be deleted with no negative consequences to you. But how do you tell which cookies are which?
Because cookies are plain text files, they can be opened and read with Notepad. Even so, the data stored inside a cookie may not be very easy to understand. That’s where a tool like Karen Kenworthy’s free Cookie Viewer (www.karenware.com/powertools.asp) can help. Cookie Viewer works with Internet Explorer and Firefox cookies, and presents all of a cookie’s data in a comprehensive but easy-to-understand way. You can see when the cookie was created, by whom, when it expires, and more. The program also lets you delete any cookies you don’t want.
Once you know what cookies you want to keep, managing them becomes much simpler. For example, you can mark the cookies you want to keep as read-only, mass-delete the rest, and then clear the preserved cookies’ read-only attribute. Another alternative is to copy the cookies you want to preserve to a safe place, mass-delete the rest, and then copy the cookies back. If you have any skill with batch files or other scripting tools, you can easily automate this process.
Managing cookies manually isn’t particularly difficult. The first time you do it can be somewhat time-consuming, but subsequent cleanups can be easy and lightning-fast.
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