Paula Rojas Blog

Internet Explorer’s privacy settings are found by choosing Tools | Internet Options, then selecting the Privacy tab, shown next. Here you can select your security settings for the Internet Zone. In other words, you tell IE what sorts of cookies you will accept when you are visiting a new or untrusted website.

(Most of the sites you visit, I bet, are untrusted this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just that they haven’t been added to the Trusted Sites list.What you trust and what Vista means by a trusted site usually means two different things.)

For the most part, the Privacy tab configures how IE7 will handle cookies. Cookies are small little text files that store personal information about you on the Vista computer. These files are then read by websites upon visiting,which in turn allows the website to tailor content specifically for you. Most of the time, cookies are very useful. For example, every time I visit the site finance.yahoo.com, I’m shown a list of the most recent stocks I’ve looked up. I also get weather information for Kansas City on the Yahoo! home page. Why? Because the site reads a cookie file that contains stock symbols and an entry for Kansas City. Yahoo! is then able to retrieve information that is most useful to just one person: me.

But not every cookie is used for such benevolent purposes. Some are commonly used by spyware and adware programs to track web surfing habits of users, usually without their consent or knowledge.A famous example is the cookie used by DoubleClick. (Don’t know what DoubleClick is? Perfect they like it that way. In fact, I’ll bet you five dollars that you have something from them on your computer at this very moment. Just do an Instant Search on “double” and see if anything comes up.) DoubleClick uses cookies to target ads to the specific surfing habits of users. It might be one reason we could hit Vegas.comat the exact same time, yet I would see an advertisement for discount golf times, while someone else would see an ad for hotel specials.

Manage Cookies

It should now make sense that most of the privacy configuration done in Internet Explorer 7 has to do with how cookies are dealt with. There are six possible settings available when you move the slider up and down:

1. Block All Cookies Blocks all cookies fromall websites. Cookies that are already stored on the systemare not accessible by websites. Effectively, this means that users accept no new cookies and websites are unable to use the cookies that have already been created. This is the most secure setting but will also prevent any convenience features that cookies make possible, such as a website displaying weather or news specific to your locale.
2. High All cookies from websites that do not have a “compact privacy policy” (that is, that are not P3P compliant) are blocked. You also block all cookies that save contact information for you.
3. Medium High All third-party cookies that lack a compact privacy policy are blocked, as well as cookies that contain contact information for you.
4. Medium All third-party cookies that lack a compact privacy policy are blocked, as are all third-party cookies that can be used to contact you without your explicit consent. Cookies that can be used to contact you without your implicit consent are restricted in their use IE7 will ask you whether to accept specific cookies of this type. This setting represents a good balance of practical use and security.
5. Low All third-party cookies that lack a compact privacy policy are blocked, and you restrict cookies that can be used to contact you without your implicit consent.
6. Accept All Cookies IE7 will accept all cookies, and cookies that are already on your computer are accessible by websites you visit.Microsoft strongly recommends against using this setting.