Crush Those Cookies, or Just Manage Them

You can't escape them: As you hop around the Web, traces of your surfing habits--cookies--are being left behind on your system by the sites you're visiting. Cookie files, which are written to your hard drive by a Web server, identify you to a site during your current, and subsequent, Web sessions. Such files are increasingly used by sites to track your surfing behavior, ostensibly to customize your browsing experience. But what if you don't want every Web site to know where you've been? The Limit Software's handy $15 utility, Cookie Crusher 2.5d, offers a convenient solution that puts the power of privacy in the hands of the Web surfer.

While both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator let you disable cookies entirely, or prompt you to accept or reject cookies, neither browser provides a way to manage cookies on a long-term, site-by-site basis. Nor do they allow you to always accept one cookie from a site and reject another cookie from the same site. That's where Cookie Crusher enters the equation.

Slice and Bake

Getting started with Cookie Crusher 2.5d is a simple process. The 1.1MB program is available as a download from the company's Web site (or from FileWorld), and requires little effort to install. You can read the useful help file or take a tour of Cookie Crusher's features immediately after installation, but if you opt to do neither, you'll be left hanging: The program does nothing to prompt you through your initial configuration.

Even so, figuring out the program by nosing around on your own isn't too hard. The program's interface consists of a compact, simple screen with five tabs--Filters, Session, Cookies, Configure, and Settings--that serve as instant access points for managing cookies. During use, Cookie Crusher operates in the background and resides as an icon in your Windows taskbar; the icon changes depending upon the site you're visiting. For example, when you're on a site you've accepted cookies from, the icon appears as a check mark; when it's a site whose cookies you've rejected, the icon is a bull's-eye. To view cookies, alter cookies or your configuration, or even disable the program temporarily, you just right-click on the taskbar icon.

Your first stop should be the Configure tab, where you can choose to have Cookie Crusher launch upon starting Windows or any other program, including Internet Explorer, Navigator, or Opera. The Settings tab will be of interest only to users of international versions of IE or Navigator, as that tab lets you properly match the screens of those browsers to Cookie Crusher's functionality.