Hi,
I've read the info about cookies, but still have a basic question:
When I clear cookies, I don't want to clear everything... when I do that I'm clearing the bad and the good...

Could you please tell me how to exclude certain sites from having their cookies cleared? (e.g.forum log-in and password info., google, etc).

Thanks,
Richard[size=6]

The best program I have found that is efficient in that regard is ccleaner available at www.ccleaner.com. Free and has an "issues "tab that gets all those entries going nowhere.

Many anti-spware applications, like Ad-AwareSE will identify "bad" cookies during their hard drive scan, and recommend these for deletion.
Firefox and Mozilla browsers make manual review and deletion of cookies rather easy; keep those from sites you recognise (e.g. Yahoo, NYT, BC, Borders, Best Buy) and delete the rest.
Regards,
John

thanks for the replies.

I have CCleaner, but it deletes everything.

Could you please tell me how to exclude certain sites from having their cookies cleared? (e.g.forum log-in and password info., google, etc).

Thanks,
Richard

Open CCleaner, and click on Options.
Click the Cookies tab.
In the box on the left, you'll see a list of the cookies you have on your machine.
The box on the right, is for the cookies you want to keep.
Between the two, are 2 arrows, one pointing right, and the other pointing left.
In the box on the left, click the cookie you want to save, then click on the arrow pointing to the right.
That will move the cookie to the protected side.
Do the opposite, to remove a cookie from the protected side
Anything on the right, will not be detected on a CCleaner scan, so any cookies reported, can be cleaned.

Many thanks for the info on how to sort the cookies on CCleaner!!!
Yep, I'm all set now.
One other question: is it best to use CCleaner to delete (selected) cookies, then all History, and Temp files etc?
Which boxes/options are best left unchecked?
Cheers,
Richard

As jgweed said. The best way I think is to use the Ad-Aware Personal/Plus/ or even Professional. It detects tracking cookies and will delete them. As well as getting rid of all the other bad adware and spyware stuff. Without getting rid of the good stuff.