TUTORIAL
HOW TO MANAGE AND DELETE COOKIES ON YOUR PC AND SMARTPHONE If you have been browsing around the Internet long enough, you’ll likely have come across the term cookies in particular when websites dole them out and store them on your computer or smartphone. Rather than being a tasty baked treat, cookies are actually files that store tiny little bits of information about you to optimise your experience when you visit a particular website but they have another motive as well - to track your activities.
DELETING COOKIES ON GOOGLE CHROME FOR DESKTOP 1) Go to your Chrome browser window address bar and type chrome://history
2) Click the three horizontal lines in the upper left corner next to History. Then select Clear Browsing Data
3) Select how far back you want to delete your cookies from the last hour all the way to every cookie saved on your PC. Then press the blue Clear Data button.
Whenever you use a web browser on a device be it your smartphone or your PC and access a website, the site will pass you one or more cookies or read them if you already have one. Most cookies are innocuous and are actually useful as they help to save information stored from one session on a website so you can continue later. An example of this is that stored cookies help you to login to some websites like your email account more easily rather than having to input your password each and every time - an onerous chore indeed. Another scenario where cookies are beneficial are when they save stuff in your shopping cart when you’re buying things online - if this wasn’t the case you’d have to buy everything piecemeal one item at a time which would be a nightmarish experience indeed.
DELETING COOKIES ON GOOGLE CHROME FOR MOBILE
While most cookies are innocuous and actually serve a useful purpose, some websites also serve third-party cookies from advertisers to ostensibly serve you ads relevant to your interests but which can be used to track your activities on the Internet to some degree. To take back control of your privacy, here’s how to delete cookies in the most popular browsers on desktop and mobile. Most browsers are rather indiscriminate in what they purge and you’ll likely get all your cookies wiped both benign and not wiped. You’ll have to login to all your favourite websites and email accounts again, but this occasional spring cleaning of your PC or smartphone is a necessary task much like keeping your own home spick and span. Here’s how to clean up your cookies on the most popular browsers on the PC, Mac and your smartphone.
1) In your Chrome browser on mobile, click the upper right ellipsis icon, it’s the one with three vertically aligned full stops like a traffic light. 2) Go to Settings > Privacy > Clear Browsing Data. You can select how far back to clear your cookies from one hour ago all the way to every cookie on your phone. Press the blue Clear Data button and you’re done. SHOUT 2019 BUMPER EDITION
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