Viewing Sites Privacy Report In Windows XP


When Internet Explorer blocks or restricts a cookie, it displays this icon on your status bar. (Choose View, Status Bar, if your status bar is not visible.)

To find out what cookie was blocked and why, double-click this icon. You will see the site’s Privacy Report dialog box, which will indicate which cookies were blocked or restricted. To learn more about why a cookie was blocked or restricted, double-click it in the Privacy Report dialog box.

To read the privacy report for any site, and to find out whether or not Internet Explorer has blocked or restricted cookies from that site, choose View, Privacy Report. Figure 1 shows part of the Privacy Report dialog box for the Microsoft Encarta Web site (MSN Encarta : Online Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Atlas, and Homework).

Note that three cookies have been served and that all three have been accepted—that is, they have met the privacy condition for this user. If a cookie had been rejected, the word Blocked would have showed in the Cookies column. You can set the dialog box to show only the names of sites with blocked cookies by selecting Restricted Web Sites from the Show list.


Figure 1. A site’s privacy report provides information about all parties contributing content to that site. Double-click a site URL to read its privacy policy (if any).

Double-clicking the entry for the first accepted cookie in this example reveals the privacy statement for Microsoft Corporation, shown in Figure 2.


Figure 2. This Privacy Policy dialog box shows the privacy policy for an accepted cookie.