tracking cookies, help?

[ronaldsicoli]

So my mom bought a new lap top yesterday, and just downloaded limewire.. i know.. i know.. its usually virus central. so i just thought i would check out the security report to see if there was any viruses. And the report says everything is fine, but i have 190 tracking cookies, and 5 minutes ago i only have 183! Are these very harmful to my computer and to they invade my privacy a lot? i read a thread on here saying that it can get the the point where they can control your webcam, and mic! How do i get rid of these, do i need to get rid of them, can i use my webcam to take pictures on facebook?

[DoZe]

Don't worry about the cookies(mmmmmm cookies), tracking cookies are used to remember usernames and passwords on websites,shopping cart lists, preferences and things like that, Cookies are harmful text files and they can't harm your computer ,ther's no need to worry about them.

[Aldrin]

I believe this would help you either....

Tracking Cookies may be used to track internet user's web browsing habits. This can also be done in part by using the IP address of the computer requesting the page or the referrer field of the HTTP header, but cookies allow for a greater precision. This can be done for example as follows:

1. If the user requests a page of the site, but the request contains no cookie, the server presumes that this is the first page visited by

    the user; the server creates a random string and sends it as a cookie back to the browser together with the requested page;

2. From this point on, the cookie will be automatically sent by the browser to the server every time a new page from the site is

    requested; the server sends the page as usual, but also stores the URL of the requested page, the date/time of the request, and 

    the cookie in a log file.

By looking at the log file, it is then possible to find out which pages the user has visited and in what sequence. For example, if the log contains some requests done using the cookie id=abc, it can be determined that these requests all come from the same user. The URL and date/time stored with the cookie allows for finding out which pages the user has visited, and at what time.Third-party cookies and Web bugs, also allow for tracking across multiple sites. Tracking within a site is typically used to produce usage statistics, while tracking across sites is typically used by advertising companies to produce anonymous user profiles (which are then used to determine what advertisements should be shown to the user).

A tracking cookie may potentially infringe upon the user's privacy but they can be easily removed. Current versions of popular web browsers include options to delete 'persistent' cookies when the application is closed.