Online advertising companies, which serve billions of graphic banner advertisements per day, are able to exchange cookie information with a consumers' computer as they deliver banner ads to a page a consumer is viewing, even if the consumer does not click on the banner ad. Because these online advertising services provide banner ads and other services to thousands of the most popular web sites, the companies can compile a profile of the pages a user visits across different web sites and over time. The exchange of cookie information and the profiling it enables take place without the knowledge or consent of most consumers. This is because the original, default configurations of the leading browsing programs, including Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Communicator, allow all web sites to place cookies on users' computers without any notification to the consumer. These programs do, however, allow consumers limited choices in their browser's settings or preferences to provide protection against the invisible exchange of cookie information.
Consumers can also delete existing cookies.
Asking your computer to warn you whenever a cookie is about to be sent to your hard drive may make your on-line experience more cumbersome. If you erase your cookies, you may need to re-enter your original user ID and password to gain access to certain sites. If you decide to erase cookies associated with such sites, be sure you have your ID and password available. It is up to you, the consumer, to decide for yourself whether the benefits of enabling cookies outweighs your privacy concerns. Click on the button that reads Warn Before Accepting Cookies .