Find out how many cookies Internet sites save to your system
A cookie is a little snippet of data that websites can save to systems of users connecting to them. While web browsers ship with options to block cookies by default or prompt users for action, the default way of handling cookies is to allow them to be saved automatically.
Cookies are not necessarily bad as they can be used for a variety of legitimate purposes such as saving the logged in state of a user or site preferences without account.
Cookies do have a bad reputation though which comes from the fact that they are used for tracking purposes. Generally speaking, you need to distinguish between first and third party cookies.
First party cookies are saved by the hostname you are on. If you visit Ghacks and my site would save a cookie to your system, that would be a first party cookie.
Third party cookies on the other hand are saved by external domain names, say a Facebook or Google ads cookie. This only happens if the site has embedded third party scripts on the other hand most of the time.
So, if you see Google Analytics or Google Ads being used on a site, chance is high that Google third party cookies are saved to your system.
Since services that drop cookies on systems can process those cookies whenever sites that embed their scripts are accessed, it is possible to use them for tracking purpose.
Find out how many cookies are saved on your computer right now
The first thing you may want to check is how many cookies are saved on your system right now. Note that cookies are browser and profile dependent. If you use multiple browsers or different profiles, then you will notice that cookies are independent of each other in this case.
Firefox native
- Tap on the Alt-key on your keyboard and select Tools > Options.
- Switch to Privacy and select Show Cookies. Note that this is only visible on the page if you have set the history to "use custom settings for history".
- The cookies window displays sites and the cookies they have saved to your system.
Google Chrome (native)
- Load chrome://settings/cookies in the browser's address bar.
Internet Explorer (native)
- Press the Alt-key and select Tools > Internet Options.
- Select the General tab if it is not active and click on the Settings button.
- Here you need to click on View files which opens the temporary Internet files folder in Windows Explorer.
Third-party programs
- IE Cookies View displays all Internet Explorer cookies saved to the system (Windows-only).
- Mozilla Cookies View does the same for Mozilla-based browsers (Windows-only).
- Chrome Cookies View does the same for Chrome-based browsers (Windows-only).
Find out which cookies a site saves to your system
The easiest way to find out how many cookies a site saves to your system is to use the Developer Tools that are included in your browser of choice.
Firefox
- Hit F12 to open the Developer Tools of the browser.
- Switch to the storage tab here and load websites as usual in the browser.
- Once you do, all cookies that a site saves are displayed here among other information.
Google Chrome
- Hit F12 to open the Developer Tools window in Chrome.
- Switch to resources and there to cookies.
- Here you find all cookies listed by the site in the active tab.
Internet Explorer
- Hit F12 to open the Internet Explorer Developer Tools.
- Switch to Network > Details, and there to cookies.
- All cookies saved by the site in the active tab are listed here.
What you can do with those information
Now that you know how many and which cookies sites save to your system, you may want to do something about it. One of the easiest options is to disable third-party cookies completely in the browser.
Firefox: Press Alt, select Tools > Options, then Use custom settings for history under Privacy and Security, and there Never next to "accept third-party cookies".
Chrome: Load chrome://settings/ in the browser, click on Advanced, then on Site Settings and there on Cookies. There you check "block third-party cookies".
Internet Explorer: Tap on the Alt-key and select Tools > Internet Options. Switch to Privacy and click on Advanced there. Check "Override automatic cookie handling" and switch third-party cookies to block.
Microsoft Edge: Start with a click on the Menu-icon and then on Setings. Scroll down to Advanced settings and click on the button underneath it (named view advanced settings). Scroll down to cookies and select "block only third-party cookies" from the menu.
Opera: Load opera://settings/, switch to Privacy & security, and make sure "block third-party cookies and site data" is checked there.
You can also switch the settings to prompt instead. This will displays a prompt whenever a site wants to save a cookie to your system.
An alternative to that are browser extensions that may provide you with a variety of excellent features. Here is a small selection of tools:
- Cookie Controller for Firefox improves cookie management in the browser.
- Self-Destructing Cookies for Firefox removes cookies automatically when you leave a site.
- Tab Cookies for Chrome deletes cookies once you close a tab.
Favor another add-on? Please share it in the comment section below.
Now Read: How to delete cookies on a computer
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.