Cookies—what could be wrong with such deliciousness? Well, even a certain monster on Sesame Street is less into gluten these days. Maybe that's because his beloved snack food had its name co-opted back in the 1990s by the little data files that websites use to improve your experience...and track your activity.
Cookies get stored on your computer when you use a web browser. The cookie file gets read by the server on the other end of the connection. Most of the time, cookies are a good thing—without authentication cookies, you'd constantly be entering usernames and passwords as you visit websites, over and over, on every page. Cookies also make it possible for online shopping carts to work without losing all your items before purchase.
But, cookies can also be used to track you. When you visit a site, you may not get a cookie from just the server for that site, but also a tracking cookie from the advertisers on that site—that's called a third-party cookie. Those can be used to look at where you're going whenever you visit a new website—tracking your moves, so to speak. This has long had privacy advocates up in arms, even though cookies typically do not collect any personalized information. They're bad enough that Mozilla is blocking them by default in Firefox, and Google claims it'll phase them out entirely in a couple of years from the Chrome browser.
The problem is, blocking or deleting all cookies is almost crippling to your web adventures. Yet letting every single cookie through compromises your privacy. So what do you do?
Cookie Control
One option is to nuke all existing cookies. Then you can take some control back. How you do it depends on the desktop or mobile browser you're using. Google Chrome and Firefox users should consider the Click&Clean extension (below) and use it to take care of cookies.
(Click&Clean extension)
But there are manual methods.
Take advantage of the built-in controls in each browser to limit the cookies you receive. At the very least, always block the third-party/advertiser cookies. It's not foolproof, as advertisers can find ways around that simple option, but it's a start. There are many extensions that help you control cookies on browser like Firefox and Chrome. Check out their respective web stores/repositories for options.
Google Chrome (Desktop)
Click the three-dot icon menu in the upper-right corner to get the Chrome menu, and select More tools > Clear browsing data. In the pop-up box, check off the third and fourth boxes to delete cookies and clear cached images and files. Just pick a timeframe from the menu at the top.
To manage the cookies in Chrome, type "chrome://settings/content/cookies" in the omnibox (without the quote marks). Tell Chrome to allow data from local sites you actually visit, only keep data until you close the browser, or block cookies altogether. The best option: Block all third-party cookies. You can also set exceptions—if you block all cookies, you might to still allow them for, say, Amazon and NYTimes.com, just so you don't have to re-type your password all the time.
Click See All Cookies and Site Data to see a list of the cookies actually installed locally on your computer. You can go through them one by one and delete as desired. It's not a bad idea to just do a Remove All on cookies every few months, just to clear things out.
Google Chrome (Mobile)
Access the menu via the ellipsis menu in the lower-right (iOS) or upper-right (Android), and select Settings > Privacy > Clear Browsing Data. Check off the section for cookies and tap Clear Browsing Data (iOS) or Clear Data (Android). That's all you can do; you don't get any granular controls over existing cookies (except for selecting a time-frame at the top) and can't block third-party cookies alone.
Mozilla Firefox
Click the upper-right hamburger stack and select Options > Privacy & Security. Under Cookies and Site Data, click Clear Data > Cookies and Site Data > Clear to remove your entire cookie history.
Back to Cookies and Site Data, select Manage Data if you want to choose the sites from which to remove cookies. There's also a checkbox to Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed. But that may be overkill. Under Manage Exceptions, create Exceptions to always (or never) accept cookies from select sites.
Firefox (Android)
Go to the three-dot menu and select Settings > Privacy > Cookies. You get three choices: Enabled, Enabled Excluding 3rd Party, or Disabled. To erase all cookies, on the Privacy screen, check the box by Clear Private Data on Exit. You'll get another pop-up to pick Cookies & Active Logins, among other settings.
Firefox (iOS)
Tap the hamburger menu on the lower-right, select Settings >Tracking Protection. Select Standard or Strict. The latter is basically a private browsing mode.
But for true cookie control, go to Settings > Data Management > Cookies and turn them off. You can Clear Private Data at the bottom of the screen. Or click Website Data at the top to delete cookie data site by site.
Microsoft Edge
Internet Explorer is (mostly) dead, long live Microsoft Edge. To clear cookies, select the three-dot menu and select Settings. Click the hamburger menu on the top left and select Privacy and services. Under Clear browsing data, click Choose what to clear. Some options will be pre-selected; can click or de-select the items you want to delete. Click Clear now. Back under Clear browsing data, you can also choose what gets cleared every time you close the browser.
To manage cookies in the future, scroll up to Tracking Prevention. Choose one of three options: Basic, Balanced, or Strict. You can also see blocked trackers and set exceptions.
Safari (macOS)
By default, Safari is only taking cookies from sites you visit—not third-party cookies. You can make changes by going to the Safari menu (a gear icon) and selecting Preferences > Privacy and looking under Cookies and website data > Manage Website Data. From there, pick the sites whose cookies you crush; click Remove All > Remove Now to kill all cookies.
If you'd like to manage how Safari handles cookies, look for the option to Block All Cookies on that same Privacy tab.
To manage the cookies Safari will accept, click any site under Cookies and Website data to have Safari ask sites and third parties not to track you. Safari may ask on your behalf every time, but it's up to individual websites whether they'll comply or not.
Safari (iOS)
With Safari, you don't access the cookie settings by opening the browser itself. In iOS, go to Settings > Safari and toggle Block All Cookies to on.
To kill all cookies, choose Clear History and Website Data. To kill only select cookie data stored by websites (and keep your History), scroll down to Advanced > Website Data. You'll get a list of the sites storing the most data; at the bottom of the list click Show All Sites to see the full list. Delete the data for sites you don't recognize or trust by swiping left; you'll sleep better. Clear them all by clicking Remove All Website Data at the bottom.
Further Reading
- How to Change Your Default Web Browser
- How to Make Google Your Homepage
- How to Enable Picture-in-Picture Video in Your Browser
- How to Disable Web Notifications
- More in Browsers