Deleting Cookies Stored in Firefox

Windows Security Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Deleting Cookies Stored in Firefox

This section provides a tutorial example on how to delete all cookies currently stored in Firefox and change settings to ask Firefox to delete new cookies when the browser is closed.

Cookies persisted on your computer hard disk always pose potential security risks. You should review and delete persisted cookies in Firefox regularly.

1. Run Firefox and click "Tools > Options" menu. Then click the "Privacy" tab.

2. Select "Firefox will: Use custom settings for history" option. You will see more settings showing up.

3. Click the "Show Cookies" button. You will see the "Cookies" dialog box.

4. Open any site in the site list and select any cookie entry. You will see details of the cookie displayed.

For example, I selected "lidc" cookie from "linkedin.com". The value of the cookie is a list of parameter. LinkedIn could be using this cookie to remember something I did when I visit their last time and to provide better user experience when I visit it again. If I delete this cookie, I can still visit LinkedIn.

5. Review all cookies from each site. You may see cookies from a site that you have never visited before.

For example, I saw a site named as: "this.content.served.by.adshuffle.com" in the site list. It has one cookie: NSC_betivggmf-opef. Clearly, some other site I visited hosted an add from this.content.served.by.adshuffle.com, which pushed a persisted cookie to my computer.