Applies to: All Operating Systems (Windows, iOs, OS X & Android) and most Web Browsers.
You may have seen many websites (including this one) ask you to allow cookie use, or at least tell you that they use cookies. The BBC cookie message is massive and looks like this:
bbc cookies
But what are cookies? What control over them do you actually have?
What is it about techies and naming things? In the computer world, a “bus” can’t take passengers, a “port” has no ships and you certainly don’t want vinegar on your “chips”. But worst of all, in my book, computer cookies are completely lacking in chocolate chips…

What is a Cookie?

Not a computer cookie. Sorry!

Not a browser cookie. Sorry!

They’re also sometimes called browser cookies, HTTP cookies or tracker cookies – it’s exactly the same thing
A cookie (in the computer world) is a small file that a website puts onto your computer to store some information. It might be to remember your email address or password, so you don’t need to log in again, or to store what products you’ve looked at in a web shop so it can display them straight away next time. In some cases it might even be to remember what type of products you looked at, so it can show you similar, but different ones next time.

The problem comes when you find your computer is having trouble accessing something because it won’t allow the website to store a cookie.

For example, say you want to log in to a website where you need a password (for example, the Inner Circle. And you can read about how the IC uses cookies here). You don’t mind if the computer doesn’t remember it for next time, so you might think it doesn’t matter if your computer won’t allow cookies.
But the website uses the cookie to store the fact that you got the password right. So if your PC won’t allow it to store cookies at all, you can’t access the site at all. Or you may get strange things happening, like items disappearing from your shopping basket.
So you might need to set your PC to allow cookies – at least for that website.

Clear / Delete or Remove cookies

Sometimes you want to delete cookies from your browser. Either all cookies, cookies just from one website, or cookies from the past 30 minutes!?
Remember if you use “Private browsing mode” or “Incognito Mode” then the cookies set in those windows will be deleted automatically when you close down your web browser. This mode is ideal for internet banking.

  1. Each browser has different ways to manage cookies
  2. Head on over to the WikiHow website here www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser’s-Cookies
  3. Select your browser from the top list
  4. Then follow the instructions on how to delete or remove cookies
  5. Remember disabling cookies globally will probably stop websites working properly

Enable / Disable cookies in your browser

(Disabling Cookies is Not Recommended)
Sometimes you might want to enable or disable cookies. Personally I just use the standard cookie settings which come with my browser, but in case you want to change or just look at what options you have, here is how to see them:

  1. Each browser has different ways to manage cookies
  2. Head on over to the WikiHow website here www.wikihow.com/Enable-Cookies-in-Your-Internet-Web-Browser
  3. Select your browser from the top list
  4. Then follow the instructions on how to enable/disable cookies
  5. Remember disabling cookies globally will probably stop websites working properly (including this one)

Bake some cookies…

There are loads of recipes for cookies, how about chocolate chip ones?

  1. Head over to WikiHow here www.wikihow.com/Make-Chewy-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies
  2. Follow instructions
  3. Eat cookies… OR…
  4. … Just as a side note, our postal address can be found here… 🙂

Crumbs that was a lot of cookie talk
Mike