[HM] Re: Internet Explorer and Cookies

Chris Beamis beamis at drizzle.com
Fri Feb 21 07:42:05 PST 2003


On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 10:54 PM, Duane Murphy wrote:

> --- At Wed, 19 Feb 2003 21:19:11 -0800, Chris Beamis wrote:
>
>>
>> This bring to mind a question I've been meaning to ask for a while:
>>
>> I used to run a linux system, and I solved the cookie problem by
>> making the cookies file into a symbolic link to /dev/null
>>
>> I wanted to do that with OS X using IE5.2, but I can't find the 
>> cookies
>> file anywhere.  Does anyone know where that file is?  I tried
>>
>> find . -iname "*cook*" -print
>>
>> but it doesn't find anything.  Also, do you think I gained anything
>> by sym-linking to /dev/null, or is it equally effective to just rm
>> the cookies file?
>
> Why are you working so hard? There is a preference in IE to just never
> accept cookies. Pretty much covers it. Of course, you'll be hard 
> pressed
> to surf at all these days.
>
>  ...Duane


That is the whole point here, to surf normally without helping people to
collect information on one.  When I linked the cookies file to 
/dev/null,
all the sites attempting to access my hard disk were fooled into 
thinking
they had successfully stored their information there but in fact it was
all going to the bit bucket.  I set Netscape (in that case) to accept 
all
cookies and didn't have to worry about any info being collected about 
me.
I was hoping to do that on OS X, too, but it looks like maybe there is
no cookies file, or maybe it is named something else.

As it is now, I have to periodically go into IE preferences and manually
delete all the cookies, or else set it to never accept cookies which of
course means I may as well not be surfing in the first place!

Chris



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