How to remove tracking cookies? Spybot, Ad-Adware etc. do not work with Opera

How to remove tracking cookies? Spybot, Ad-Adware etc. do not work with Opera

Hi there, after I've tested Firefox some time and later made a scan with Spybot S&D, it found loads of tracking cookies, about 50, although I was using Firefox just one or two weeks.

Spybot never found tracking cookies when I am using Opera alone, though I've set Opera to accept all cookies. Nor did Ad-Adware. This concludes that those programs can not identify Opera's cookies and I probably have got hundreds of tracking and ad cookies!

How do I get rid of them please??????!

I don't want to delete all the cookies. I have so many login cookies, some for sites where I long ago have forgotten the passwords. I hope I won't have to check them all idividually.

Tools>Preferences>Advanced Tab>Cookies>Manage Cookies Button.

Thanks, I know, but... I can waste my time with better things than studying about 1062 cookies!

There has some great software been written and released, that has a large database of tracking and spying cookies etc., and that could remove all those automatically in seconds.

here's a tip:

remove all your cookies.
visit the sites that you know you will NEED cookies on (log in and stuff)
exit and restart Opera
go to prefs > advanced > cookies and check "delete new cookies when exiting Opera"

Opera should now discard tracking cookies and any other annoyances whenever you close it.

You can use Proxomitron; or go to tool->advanced->cookies; and destroy every cookies except those of forum login, but believe me : it's way more simple to delete all cookies after exit.
When you suscribe to a forum, you have to send a valid e-mail adress, right ? So, you just have to click on "I forgot my password" and you'll be sent another password in few minutes.
Anyway, tracking cookies are not as dangerous as real spywares.

Thanks for all the answers, I appreciate that. I checked out Proxomitron too. Yet still I'd prefer to enable using cookies without restrictions and run a program like Spybot S&D once in a while!

I think cookies are quite handy. Not only for auto-login in forums, but to store contents of shopping baskets, remember language choices etc.pp. I just dislike that they are often abused for tracking and spying.

Any chance that Opera's cookies handling technique will be changed in a future release? I've read here that other people are unhappy about the cookie handling for other reasons too! So, I am not the only one who would like to see things changed.

Opera's cookie "managment" is a real mess and useless. Unfortunately no other application want to manage Opera's cookies because of its incomprehensible (=chaotic) file format. (Sorry but this is my impression.)

IMHO there is a concept easy to understand: white list, black list, all others.

Originally posted by fractalgp:

go to prefs > advanced > cookies and check "delete new cookies when exiting Opera"

Opera should now discard tracking cookies and any other annoyances whenever you close it.

This trick doesn't work really. Opera removes all "changed" cookies too. Therefore its an absolute useless option if you want to have some good cookies (like forum cookies with "last visited" etc.).

Cookies aren't really a threat, imho.

Originally posted by ronfein:

Opera's cookie "managment" is a real mess and useless.

I have to agree Opera could use better cookie management. It is not stellar, I'd definitely like more control over how cookies work in a more dynamic way, especially so I could ignore those tracker cookies forever more.

Originally posted by ronfein:

Unfortunately no other application want to manage Opera's cookies because of its incomprehensible (=chaotic) file format. (Sorry but this is my impression.)

Hmmm, I hadn't heard this yet but if you had a reference page I'd be interested. Perhaps Opera would be willing to make some changes for us if this is the case.

Yum

Opera's cookie format is documented, if SBSD would like they could parse it. This would only work reliable if Opera is closed, but it can be done.

I'm pretty sure spysweeper reads Opera cookies at least, but I think the other ones do as well - or else somehow IE is getting cookies without me using it to visit any pages

Originally posted by jp10558:

I'm pretty sure spysweeper reads Opera cookies at least, but I think the other ones do as well - or else somehow IE is getting cookies without me using it to visit any pages

That has happened to me, but in reverse: an aggressive tracking cookie from real.com was able to bypass my preferences in Firefox AND was able to add itself to IE 6.0 even though IE was not in use.

What's with this anti-cookie obsession? So, real.com knows some sites I visit, and??? What's the big deal? Is this really a reason to install and run special software? :-O

van grieg, you don't know that real.com is owned by abducting aliens who have a Secret Plan To Invade Our Beloved Earth ?

they already took microsoft, and made every Windows (tm)(r) show subliminal messages.



more seriously, the issue here is : do we allow (blindly) companies to build databases containing our profile, very detailed ? sure, what can they do with it ?
-> serve ads is the most probable. but other things may be done also.
what if someone cross-matches different databases ? all my life could be tracked instantly.
scary? it depends. in democracy, it shouldn't. in dictatorship, it should...
but we know (do we?) that democracy is not fool-proof either.

anyway, i don't remove my cookies because i'm not really scared by what people could do with it.
but i understand why computer users want to wipe them out.
it's good to have tools to remove cookies easily, i think it's useful especially for public computers. (people can read the cookies and find some username/password for example)


Marc, putting his aluminium foil hat back.

using a cookie from real.com no one can figure out whether you visit opera.com or not. The only thing they can do is check which sites on real.com you visit.

Originally posted by marcoledingue:

scary? it depends.

No, it's not scary. As Lars just pointed out, cookies are limited to the domains that issue them. And preventing site authors from analyzing your behavior in complex environments doesn't help them make sites more usable.

Now, of course there are systems like counters etc. that do collect information about your surfing habits. But then again, what's wrong with that? First of all, such information gathering is still limited to the sites that use the same system. Second, such information doesn't really hurt anyone. There's no way for a cookie to steal your banking password or do real harm like that. It makes marketing cheaper in the long run, and you end up paying less/getting better customized services. I'd really love all the e-marketers on Earth to learn once and forever that I don't need Cialis or Viagra or any crap like that. I'm ready to install as many tracking cookies as they want myself if it helps them get this simple fact. Third, these cookies help us get more or less global stats, which is undoubtedly useful.

So whoever is feeding this worldwide cookie paranoia (probably these are the same people who make spybots, adawares e.a.) is not doing the public any good.

Originally posted by van_grieg:

I don't need Cialis or Viagra or any crap like that.

Maybe you will need it in 20 years time.

So whoever is feeding this worldwide cookie paranoia (probably these are the same people who make spybots, adawares e.a.) is not doing the public any good.

True, they have managed to feed the paranoia so well that to many cookie and spyware is synonymous.

Originally posted by marcoledingue:

in democracy, it shouldn't. in dictatorship, it should...
but we know (do we?) that democracy is not fool-proof either.

If the government decides to learn about your online activities, it will request a log from your ISP. That will be way more reliable and complete and cheap than setting tracking cookies. This way they will not only know where you surf but also what you send and receive by mail and what you post in forums or whatever. So the cookie paranoia has nothing to do with democracy.

Originally posted by ThePast:

Maybe you will need it in 20 years time.

See, this is exactly the point. What's annoying about ads? The fact that everybody is flooded with a lot of info he doesn't need. Why does this happen? Because whoever advertises Viagra doesn't know who may need it, so they advertise everywhere. If they had a cheap and efficient way to know exactly who to target, why would they bother? By obsessively removing cookies we just make things worse, not better.

If I get to need Viagra, I certainly won't mind getting a cheap price for it.

Originally posted by van_grieg:

If the government decides to learn about your online activities, it will request a log from your ISP.

And that is already happening, in the US ISP's are forced to make backdoors in their system making it easier for lawenforcement to tap the web traffic and in EU data retention is dangerously near of becoming reality.

US situation: http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_08.php#003876

EU situation: http://chocnvodka.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2005/8/16/1141784.html

Originally posted by ThePast:

And that is already happening, in the US ISP's are forced to make backdoors in their system making it easier for lawenforcement to tap the web traffic and in EU data retention is dangerously near of becoming reality.

Which illustrates that if you're really concerned about privacy, you should go out and sign those petitions rather than be busy deleting harmless text files on your HDD.

Yup. Sadly the majority of people in the EU are unaware of the Data Retention plans, alternatively fail to see the privacy implications/threats that come along with it. Funnily enough the very same people often whines about what a horrible threat to privacy cookies are.

Cookies are harmless really, but like some I just prefer to manage what's being put on my system. So for me it's so easy to just set cookies to "Treat as specified in cookie manager" and "Accept all cookies" for 3rd party. For any site I visit and I need to set cookies it takes 5 seconds to click tools>advanced>cookies>new the server url like yahoo.com and save.

Even if you have dozens of sites you need to store cookies on it only takes seconds a piece and then you never have to worry about ANY other site setting any cookie. Also look at the tradeoff of how long you spend with installing, configuring, running. spyware programs to find them, double checking, etc.

Gook luck with it

There's a pretty straightforward process for the Opera cookies on the wiki discussion here:
http://nontroppo.org/wiki/CookieSettings
It's the same process referred to by the poster Uncle Steve.
It seems to do a very good job now of keeping "unwanted" cookies off my HDD.

2WillYum

Hmmm, I hadn't heard this yet but if you had a reference page I'd be interested.

Let's take this: http://www.opera.com/docs/fileformats/#cookies
I read this description several times but after reading I didn't know the structur of "cookies4.dat". Maybe some examples would be helpful. But it seems that I'm not alone with this misunderstanding: I found _not_ a single cookie manager program which changes this file. But there are many cookie managers which handle cookies of IE and FF selective - the same cookie managers delete Operas "cookies4.dat" only.

Ok I know a single program: http://users.westelcom.com/jsegur/Default.htm#ofe
but I read its documentation about reengineering and reliability: http://users.westelcom.com/jsegur/O4FE.HTM#TS1

These are based on http://www.opera.com/docs/fileformats/ by Yngve Pettersen combined with my observations of the file contents. There may be significant items I've missed