Skip to Content
Windows XP Hacks
book

Windows XP Hacks

by Preston Gralla
August 2003
Beginner
416 pages
12h 47m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Windows XP Hacks

Take a Bite Out of Cookies

Protect your privacy and keep your surfing habits to yourself with proper cookie handling.

Cookies are small text files that web sites put on your hard disk to personalize the site for you or to track and then record your activities on the site. Cookies have gotten a lot of press—most of it bad—but the truth is, not all cookie use is bad. As a means of site customization, they’re a great way of helping you get the most out of the Web. They can also carry information about log-in names and passwords, which is a time-saver, since you won’t have to log into each site every time you visit. If you delete all your cookies, you won’t automatically get your Amazon wish list the next time you visit their site.

Warning

Cookies are big time-savers when it comes to logging you into web sites automatically, but they can also be security holes as well. If you use them to log you in automatically, anyone who uses your computer will be able to log into those sites with your username and password.

But cookies can also be used to track your online activities and identify you. Information about you, based on what cookies gather, can be put in a database, and profiles of you and your surfing habits can be created.

Because cookies can be privacy-invaders, XP gives you a number of ways to restrict how web sites place and use cookies on your PC. To understand how to restrict the ways cookies are used on your PC, you first need to understand three cookie-related terms:

First-party ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Windows XP Hacks, 2nd Edition

Windows XP Hacks, 2nd Edition

Preston Gralla

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596005113