How to remove cookies

[ranvirsm]

I wish to rid my desktop of cookies like yieldmanager, fastclick, doubleclick etc. What good free software should I use, and also steps to be taken to prevent such nuisance. I am having Win XP(P) SP2 and MS Office 2003. How harmful are these cookies ?

[mrintech]

http://www.ccleaner.com/download

Ad serving Cookies are Not Harmful at all, if they are from trusted sources like Google etc.

[Pragadheesh]

Originally Posted by ranvirsm

How harmful are these cookies

Cookies are messages that web servers pass to your web browser when you visit Internet sites. Your browser stores each message in a small file. When you request another page
from the server, your browser sends the cookie back to the server. These files typically contain information about your visit to the web page, as well as any information you've volunteered, such as your name and interests. Cookies are most commonly used to track web site activity. When you visit some sites, the server gives you a cookie that acts as your identification card. Upon each return visit to that site, your browser passes that cookie back to the server. In this way, a web server can gather information about which web pages are used the most, and which pages are gathering the most repeat hits.

cookies can be a security threat.If cookies are enabled and if any other user tries to
access the cookies he can easily view what the previous user had accessed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

[ranvirsm]

Thanks, Mrintech and Pragadheesh.

However, use of ccleaner sometimes affects functioning of my Nokia PC Suite. Is it fine to continue?

[mrintech]

Originally Posted by ranvirsm

Thanks, Mrintech and Pragadheesh.

However, use of ccleaner sometimes affects functioning of my Nokia PC Suite. Is it fine to continue?

what affect?

[Disc_Junkie]

Try ATF Cleaner. It will not only clear cookies but all types of unneccessary files out of the PC.

www.scanwith.com/download/ATF_Cleaner.htm

[ranvirsm]

Originally Posted by mrintech

what affect?

Doesn't affect in a major manner, but things like the system tray icon does not become active, though the functionality of the program is not affected. What sort of 'settings' should one adjust in the ccleaner?