John

If you want, you can tell Internet Explorer to forget about privacy settings assigned on a site-basis and institute uniform policies for all first-party and all third-party cookies regardless of their sites of origin. For example, you can tell Internet Explorer to accept all first-party cookies and to issue a prompt for all third-party cookies (allowing you to block or accept third-party cookies on a case-by-case basis). To override automatic cookie handling, click Advanced on the Privacy tab of the Internet Options dialog box. The Advanced Privacy Settings dialog box appears, as shown in Figure.

This dialog box also includes a check box that tells Internet Explorer to accept all session cookies, which are cookies that a Web site will delete at the end of your current session. Session cookies are usually benign, so if you are planning to override automatic cookie handling, this is normally a safe option to select.

Asking Internet Explorer to prompt you for all third-party cookies is an excellent way to learn which of the sites you visit regularly rely on third-party cookies. After a few days’ experience with this setting, you can return to automatic cookie handling and tell Internet Explorer to always block cookies from any particularly troublesome third parties that you notice.


Figure. Clicking Advanced on the Privacy tab of the Internet Options dialog box lets you institute uniform policies for all first-party and third-party cookies.