Section 65. Remove a Cookie

65. Remove a Cookie

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

61 Keep Track of Websites with Bookmarks

63 Access Your Bookmarks Using .Mac

Cookies are small pieces of information that some websites store on your computer. A cookie is generally nothing to worry about; it's usually used for convenience, storing your preferences for how to view a given site, for instance. There is seldom anything more sensitive in a cookie than a username or password for a certain site, and that information can only be exchanged with the website that put it there.

KEY TERM

Cookie A piece of information that a website may store on your computer to keep track of your preferences for the site or your username and password.

However, cookies can also be used in nefarious waysto track web users' surfing habits, to try to capture your passwords, and so on. There have even been documented cases of malicious sites using "cross-site scripting" tactics to harvest credit card information or other personal data that you had submitted to another, legitimate site. Regardless of how seldom or frequently you use the Web, it's a good idea to know how to remove a cookie (or all your browser's accumulated cookies) and thereby "clean" your computer of sensitive information on a regular basis.

Although it might be tempting to simply remove all your cookies at once, be carefuldoing so can mean the loss of good cookies, the ones that store your personalized profile information for sites that you use frequently. It's a good idea to look carefully at the domain or hostname for each of your cookies, and only remove the ones you don't recognize, rather than simply deleting all your cookies in one fell swoop.

65. Remove a Cookie

Removing all your cookies, however, can be exactly the feature you need if you're trying to clean up the computer so you can give it to someone else.

1.	Open the Security Preferences Select Preferences from the Safari menu. Click the Security icon to bring up the security options.
2.	Show Your Cookies Click the Show Cookies button to display a sheet listing all the cookies currently stored on your computer, what sites created them, when they're set to expire, and what information is stored in them. Don't worry if the Contents column shows what seems to be incomprehensible garbage. Cookies aren't meant to be read by people, but rather by computers; sometimes you'll be able to tell what information a cookie is storing, but just as often the contents will be a mystery. You never know when seeing your cookies' ingredients might come in handy, however .
3.	Select a Cookie to View Click any cookie to select it. TIP You can select multiple cookies by holding down or Shift as you click. You might want to select several cookies if you want to remove all the cookies for a given site.
4.	Remove the Cookie Click Remove to delete the selected cookie or cookies from your browser.
5.	Remove All Cookies To completely clean your browser of all cookies and return it to its original, pristine condition, click Remove All . Be aware, however, that any preferences you might have stored for certain websites are also reset, and you'll have to set them up again if you return to those sites. Safari keeps records of your browsing historyall the sites you've visitedfor up to a week. This can be very convenient because it enables you to go back immediately to any site you've been to in the last seven days, using either the History menu or the History collection in the Bookmarks page. However, if you're using Safari on a computer that's shared among multiple users (and particularly if you're using a public machine), it might not be a good idea to leave your browsing history where just anybody can come in and rummage through it. When you're done browsing on a shared computer, use the Reset Safari option under the Safari menu. This option not only clears out your complete browsing and Google-searching history, it also deletes all your cookies, clears out the browser's cache (local copies of web files the browser stores for quicker access), and removes sensitive information such as names and passwords from AutoFill form fields. On the Reset Safari dialog box that appears, be sure to click the Reset button instead of the Cancel buttonfor safety, Cancel is the default action button in the dialog box.