In IE4 click View, Internet Options, then on the Advanced tab. Scroll down to the Security section and you'll see three possible settings for Cookies. Check the "Prompt before accepting cookies" option. In Navigator click Edit, then Preferences. Next click the Advanced category and check the box that says Warn me before accepting a cookie. Now every time you visit a site that wants to give your browser a cookie you'll get a message box asking you if you want to accept or reject it.
Trouble is you'll quickly get annoyed with all the cookie decisions you'll have to make. It's amazing the number of sites that pass out cookies these days and most sites that do want to, give you a baker's dozen of the things every visit.
Your other options in IE4 are to either accept every cookie that is offered or to reject them all. Navigator is a little more flexible in that it has an option to "Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server." This means that Navigator won't accept the cookie if it will be given up to just any site that asks for it, only the page that originally gave it to you.
TNPCer Jonathan T. reminds me that IE4 and IE5 no longer use the C:\Windows\Cookies folder but (unless you've purposefully moved the storage folder) stick them in the C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files folder, and he is quite right. Cookie files get dumped in with all the cached pages but if you clear your history in IE (View, Internet Options, General, Clear History) you'll dump all the temp files but NOT the cookie files. Cookies are supposed to hang around until the expiration date stamped on them by the site that gave you the cookie in the first place. And that means the person who designed that site gets to decide how long the cookie should last.
In IE4 click View, Internet Options, General, Settings, then on the View Files button. Note the cookie files mixed in with everything else. Further note the "Expires" date column. If you click on the column heading you can sort the files by date. Don't be surprised if there are a number of cookies with None as the expiration date. Or with dates many, many years in the future. Deleting cookies in IE is tedious because as Jonathan points out you have to confirm each deletion.
In Navigator if you open the cookies.txt file in Notepad you'll find the ominous warning "# This is a generated file! Do not edit" which leaves with the option of just deleting the entire file and letting Navigator generate a new albeit empty text file to hold the cookies.
So, are cookies inherently evil? Not at all. Can they be misused? Probably, but I've never been inconvenienced by a cookie and have never heard first-hand from anyone who has. Next issue I'll sweep up the cookie crumbs and point you at the freeware utilities that let you instantly hide all your cookies with the click of a mouse.
