Cookies And Spam And Virus Oh My!
 By Kathy Reynolds

Cookies are small text files deposited by websites on a visitor’s computer to permit the website to "remember" the visitor. Some cookies are useful to the consumer because they can remember passwords to frequently visited sites such as the GrandsPlace chat room and message boards. Cookies can also be useful for us when we shop online at the same place such as Amazon. They can “remember” our info so we do not have to type it in at each shopping session. (NOTE: GrandsPlace does not use cookies to track or collect any information from our users.)

Cookies can be bad things too. They can invade our rights to privacy if they are embedded with tracking software that can track a users web surfing habits even after they leave the web site.  Some hidden cookies are programmed in a way that uses stealth methods like being embedded into an image on a web site or e-mail. Some even are embedded into a transparent gif on web sites or e-mail message. Some really nasty people will even embed images with virus files. Unscrupulous people to collect e-mail addresses in order to sell them to spam lists can use a cookie. (A transparent gif is an invisible image you cannot see. Some really nasty people will even embed images with virus files.  I do use transparent gifs on the GrandsPlace Web site as place-holders but they do not contain cookies or other software.) 

To deal with cookies properly set your web browser to either disable all cookies or to ask you if you want to accept the cookie and continue browsing the page or e-mail.  To manage cookies in Internet Explorer open your browser, go to the top tool bar and choose “TOOLS”, scroll down and choose “Internet Options,”, click the “PRIVACY” tab, then click the button that says “ADVANCED”. Check the box that says “Override automatic cookie handling”.  Change all the options to “PROMPT” Click okay. A box will pop up and ask if you want to change your settings. Click Yes.  Close the Internet Options window and you are done. What doing these steps will do is set your computer to ask you if you want to accept or deny any cookie a website tries to put on your computer. If it is a cookie you want say yes, if not say no. It’s one way to protect your privacy and your computer from prying eyes and to reduce the amount of Spam you get in your inbox.