A cookie is a small amount of information on your computer that is used by some websites. For a brief overview, see What Are Cookies and How Do They Work?
Before loading a web page that uses cookies, your browser handles the page's cookies by doing two things:
You can specify how cookies should be handled by setting your Cookies
preferences. The default setting is Allow all cookies
.
To change your Cookies preferences:
For more information about the effect of each setting, see Privacy & Security Preferences - Cookies.
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To set cookie permissions for the current website:
To set cookie permission for several websites or a website you are not viewing, use the Cookie Manager.
If you have selected Ask for each cookie
in
Privacy & Security Preferences -
Cookies, you will be warned (while browsing) that a website is asking to
set a cookie. When you see such a warning, you can choose to
Allow, Allow for Session, or Deny the cookie.
Other dialog options:
allowor
denyresponse will still be in effect.
If you want to change a remembered response later, use the Cookie Manager to edit stored cookies and add or remove cookie websites.
To stop automatically accepting or rejecting cookies from a website:
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To view detailed information about cookies:
For more information about the information displayed, see Stored Cookies.
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Important: To remove cookies, follow the steps in this section. Do not try to edit the cookies file on your computer.
To remove one or more cookies from your computer:
Even though you've removed the cookies now, you will reacquire those same cookies the next time you return to the website.
To prevent that from happening, select the checkbox labeled Don't
allow websites that set removed cookies to set future cookies
. When this
checkbox is selected, websites for the cookies that you are removing are
added to the list of websites whose cookies will automatically be rejected.
You must click OK for your changes to take effect.
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This section describes how to set your Cookies preferences and control other aspects of cookie handling.
For step-by-step descriptions of various tasks related to cookies, see Using the Cookie Manager.
Your browser is set by default to accept all cookies. This section describes how to use the Cookies preferences panel to change that setting. If you're not already viewing it, follow these steps:
Cookies help websites keep track of information for you, such as the contents of your on-line shopping cart or which cities' weather you want to know about. For a brief overview, see What Are Cookies and How Do They Work?
You can select one of these options:
Note: Blocking cookies does not remove old cookies. By blocking cookies you only block websites from setting new cookies, and old cookies will still be sent to websites. To completely block a website from receiving old cookies, you need to remove its cookies.
Note: Per-website cookie permission
supersedes default cookie setting. For example, if you allow a website to set
cookies, the website can set cookies even if you choose Block cookies
.
If you allow cookies or do not change the default setting, you can also select the following preferences:
You can also get more information about your stored cookies:
This section describes how to use the Stored Cookies tab of the Cookie Manager. If you're not already viewing it, follow these steps:
The Stored Cookies tab lists all the cookies stored on your computer, the websites they belong to, and their current status.
When you select a cookie in this list, the following information about that cookie appears in the bottom portion of the tab:
| Item | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Name | The name assigned to the cookie by its originator. |
| Information | A string of characters containing the information a website tracks for you. It might contain a user key or name by which you are identified to the website, information about your interests, and so forth. |
| Host or domain | Provides the name of the cookie's host or domain.
A host cookie is sent back, during subsequent visits, only to the server that set it. A domain cookie is sent back to any website that's in the same domain as the website that set it. A website's domain is the part of its URL that contains the name of an organization, business, or school—such as netscape.com or washington.org. |
| Path | The file pathway. This is provided only if the cookie should be sent back to all URLs that are on that path or lower. For example, http://a.b/x/y/z.html means that the cookie can also be set for path x/. |
| Send For | When this field is For encrypted connections onlyit means that the browser checks the connection whenever the server asks for a cookie and will not send it unless the connection is encrypted (HTTPS). |
| Expires | The date and time at which the cookie will be deactivated. The browser regularly removes expired cookies from your computer. |
To remove cookies, click one of these buttons:
Select this checkbox to prevent the cookies you remove from being added back into the list later:
Even if you remove cookies now, you will reacquire those same cookies the next time you return to the website. To prevent that from happening, select this checkbox. When this checkbox is selected, websites for the cookies that you are removing are added to the list of websites whose cookies will automatically be rejected.
You must click Close for your changes to take effect.
This section describes how to use the Cookie Websites tab of the Cookie Manager. If you're not already viewing it, follow these steps:
The Cookie Websites tab of the Cookie Manager lists the websites for which your decisions have been remembered, and what your decisions were. It also allows you to add and remove websites from the list.
To add cookies websites manually:
To remove a cookie website:
Once you've removed a website from this list, Cookie Manager remembers
nothing about it. If the Ask for each cookie
option is selected in
the Cookies preferences panel, you will be warned when any website not in this
list requests permission to set a cookie.
Many websites require you to type a user name and password before you can enter the website. For instance, personalized pages and websites containing your financial information usually require you to log in.
The user name and password you use at a particular website can be read by the site's administrator. Potentially, that person could then attempt to log into other websites where you may have used the same user name and password. If this concerns you, you may wish to use a different password at every website with which you register.
Password Manager can help you remember some or all of your names and passwords by storing them on your computer's hard disk, and entering them for you automatically when you visit such websites.
When Password Manager is active (as it is by default), it gives you an opportunity to save user names and passwords on your hard drive that you enter while using the Internet.
For example, after you log onto a website from a page that requests a user
name and password, a dialog box appears asking, Do you want Password
Manager to remember this logon?
When you see this dialog box, you can
click one of the following buttons:
Similarly, when you log onto an email account or an FTP site, or perform any other action that requires the browser itself to display a special dialog box for your login information, you can select this option in the dialog box:
The next time you check your email or perform other tasks that require a password only, the password will be submitted directly without any further action on your part. For tasks that require you to enter both a user name and password, you need to click a Login button or equivalent after Password Manager fills in the information.
Password Manager saves your user names and passwords on your own computer in a file that's difficult, but not impossible, for an intruder to read. See Encrypting Stored Sensitive Information for information on protecting your stored user names and passwords with encryption technology.
If the Password Manager dialog box described above does not appear when you click Submit after typing your user name and password, Password Manager may be turned off or the website may disallow its use.
To check whether Password Manager is currently active, see Turning Password Manager On and Off.
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There are two different ways that Password Manager can fill in user names and passwords on your behalf:
The next time you visit the website, Password Manager automatically fills in your user name and password on the website's log in page. You can then click the Login button, or equivalent, to send the information to the server.
Use Password Manager to remember these values.
In most cases, the next time you attempt to access that server, Password Manager automatically fills in your user name and password in the same dialog box. You can then click OK to send the information to the server.
In some cases, such as when you open your email account, &brandShortName; needs to send only the password to the server, and does so immediately without displaying the dialog box or requiring any further action on your part.
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Password Manager is on by default. To turn it off:
Remember passwordsto turn Password Manager off.
To turn Password Manager on, follow steps 1 and 2 above, but select the checkbox in step 3 rather than deselecting it.
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To see the user names and passwords you have stored and to display a list of websites from which logon information never is saved:
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If you use Password Manager to save passwords, then this sensitive information is stored on your computer in a file that's difficult, but not impossible, for an intruder to read.
For example, if your computer is in an area where unauthorized people have access to it, it's possible for a determined person to read the file containing your sensitive information.
For a greater degree of security, you may want to protect the file with encryption. Encryption makes it much harder for an unauthorized person to view your stored sensitive information.
Your decision about whether to use encryption for stored sensitive data is a tradeoff between improved security and convenience.
If you use encryption, you will need to enter a master password periodically, which can be inconvenient. If you don't, it may be easier for a stranger who has access to your computer to steal your passwords.
To enable encryption of passwords you need to set a master password. If your master password has not previously been set, you can set it at this time:
Make sure your new password is difficult to guess. For some suggestions on how to improve password security, see Choosing a Good Password.
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To change your master password:
Make sure your new password is difficult to guess. For some guidelines, see Choosing a Good Password.
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Normally, you are asked for your master password once during each &brandShortName; session during which you access any of your stored sensitive information.
It's also possible to require that your master password be requested each time it is needed, or after a certain amount of time has passed. For details, see Master Password Timeout.
You can log out of your master password so that it must be entered again before any sensitive information can be stored or retrieved. This is useful if you are going to leave your computer unattended for a period of time.
To log out of your master password:
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If you forget your master password, you won't be able to access any of the stored password it protects. Your master password is your most important password. Make sure you remember it or record it in a safe place.
As a last resort, it's possible to reset your master password if you are sure you can't remember it. However, resetting your master password permanently erases all the web and email passwords, saved on your behalf by Password Manager. You will also lose all your personal certificates associated with the Software Security Device.
Before taking this drastic step, read Reset Master Password.
If you are sure you can't remember or retrieve your master password, follow these instructions to reset it:
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If you wish, you can choose not to download any images when you browse the web. This greatly restricts what you can view online, but may be helpful if you have a slow connection and wish to shorten the time it takes web pages to load.
You can also control how frequently animated images repeat their animation, or turn off animation completely.
The next section describes how to control these image settings. The default settings allow all images to be accepted and allow them to repeat their animation.
This section describes how to set preferences for images. To view the preference settings for images:
Image Acceptance preferences allow you to control whether or under what conditions the &brandShortName; browser should display images:
These settings control how many times animated images repeat their animation: