I am a political news junkie, and I read a lot of on-line newspapers, magazines and political blogs. Over the last couple of months, I have been picking up about 50-60 tracking cookies each day.

I have Windows Home, and I run Nod 32, Spybot and I scan frequently with SuperAntispyware, Adaware 2008 and Malawarebytes’ Antispyware. I use FF2. I have set the cookie control in tools>options>privacy, and I have tried the FF add on Cookie Culler. But it didn’t seem to prevent all of the cookies that I am getting.

Yesterday I purchased Webroot Spy Sweeper and installed it on my pc. A mistake! It slowed my pc to a crawl, and after I uninstalled it, the pc was back working properly again.

I was really disappointed with Spy Sweeper, because I have used this program in the past and it worked fine at that time. So now I have pitched it.

I understand that most tracking cookies are not harmful, but I don’t like having them on the pc.

Does anyone know of some way (or some spy program) that I can use to prevent these cookies from getting on my pc, or will I just have to live with it and scan frequently?

Thanks.

Tracking cookies can be blocked by a HOSTS file.

I use hpHosts and MVPS HOSTS files only managed by HostsMan and I use its enclosed proxy HostsServer to speed up Internet browsing:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm <== Has a good explanation about the HOSTS file
http://www.abelhadigital.com

Set to Firefox to block all cookies then just allow the cookies you do want.

Or use the Firefox extension Cookie Safe (Lite) to make that job easier. It is a minor annoyance for first few days as you have to add exceptions for sites you need cookies for (just a case of clicking status bar icon and allowing) but after that it's excellent, I've been using it a while now.

Thank you very much folks. I'll give these suggestions a try.

Webroot began around when Windows ME was first published. The fact that they are still alive is proof of a Hell.