Tracking Cookies

It's amazing how many of these appear on my computer now, picked up by
Spybot S&D. One deletes them and they reappear again!

Ali...

You don't need Spybot for that. Firefox lets you manage cookies quite
well.

Running Firfox 2, I decided to block all cookies in options, but that is
like shooting yourself in the foot for sites that you want access, as
they store your access information. Even choosing the 'ask me' option

Ali...

Currently, I have it set to
[/] Allow sites to set cookies
[/] for the originating site only (whick cuts out most tracking
cookies)
Keep cookies until I close Firefox.

Of course, I have most advertising sites redirected to localhost by the
HOSTS file.

is just as bad. Try it sometime! Most files have obscure
addresses/names, so you don't know where they are coming from.

Interestingly, sites that carry a lot of advertising appear to have most
cookies, like newspapers, Racing Post, O2 etc. Some dump as many as 9
cookies on your hard drive at a time.

I know they are only small files, but they are becoming more intrusive.

I set my browsing history to 3 days, so that is the maximum amount of
information that 'they' can get.

sam...

If you click on 'Tools - Options - Privacy - Cookies - then in the
dropdown menu
click on "I close Firefox" ', You can clear the cookies everytime you
close the browser.