Apart from private browsing feature of many browsers like FF and IE, can use 'Hotspot Shield' if you are really paranoid about privacy. http://hotspotshield.com/ Its a secure vpn.
--Bhaskar. On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 6:45 PM, Navneet Thillaisthanam < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi Krishnakumari! > > The reason AV software flags tracking cookies is because they are a*privacy > threat > * to individuals on whose machines they are set. It most often does not > carry anything malicious and there is nothing that needs to be '* > disinfected*' from it. It is just like any other cookie that stores > information pertaining your interactions with some website. > > Why then are tracking cookies flagged by AV or how do they differ from any > other normal cookie? Tracking cookies are set surreptitiously into your > browser by some website (lets call it R) that has advertised (or could also > be broken into) in some other website (lets call this A) that you had > visited. Now you visit website B, in which R advertises again, the cookie > gets sent back to R. > > Extend this to a few hundred websites, you can see that the tracking > cookies will allow R to build a profile of your browsing patterns without > your knowledge which is exactly what some laws forbid. Usually, some service > provider would love to have this sort of mechanism to provide > *'better'*services to its existing customers or to entice new customers or > simply > advertise to people itself. BT Phorm (a behavioural advertisement system) > was flayed by the security world for this same reason - it followed > activities of its customers. > > As a user of the Internet, tracking cookies are better kept with the > website itself and not my system. Delete them! No use quarantining or > cleaning it! > > The best way to keep yourself clean from these menace - use Firefox 3.5 > with private browsing for untrusted sites that keeps no cookies after the > session. There might be other web browsers that provide private browsing > feature but I do not work with anything else but FF to know. Call it a > frog-in-the-well mentality! :) > > > Cheers! > Navneet >
