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# 5.7. Cookies

Cookies are a mechanism used by web sites to store and retrieve information using your browser. For example, a web site may allow you to customize the content and layout of the pages you see, so that your choices are persistent across different visits to that web site.

The web site is able to remember your preferences by storing a cookie on your computer. Then, on future visits, the web site retrieves the information stored in the cookie to format the content of the site according to your previously specified preferences.

Thus, cookies play a very useful role in web browsing. Unfortunately, web sites often store and retrieve information in cookies without your explicit knowledge or consent. Some of this information may be quite useful to the web site owners, for example, by allowing them to collect summary statistics on the number of visits different areas of the web sites get, or to customize banner advertising.

The cookies module of the KDE Control Center allows you to set policies for the use of cookies when you are browsing the web with the Konqueror web browser.

| Note that the policies that you set using this control module will not apply to other web browsers such as Netscape®.

## 5.7.1. Policy

Using the Policy tab, you can configure the KDE applications will handle cookies. You can do this by specifying a general cookie policy as well as special cookie policies for certain domains or hosts.

The top of the policy tab has a checkbox labeled Enable Cookies. If you leave this unchecked, cookies will be completely disabled. However, this may make browsing rather inconvenient, especially as some web sites require the use of browsers with cookies enabled.

Therefore, you will probably want to enable cookies, and then set specific policies on how you want them to be handled. There are three possible options, as seen in the group of radio buttons labeled "Default Policy".

Ask for confirmation before accepting cookies

  If this option is selected, you will be asked for confirmation every time a cookie is stored or retrieved. You can selectively accept or reject each cookie. The confirmation dialog will also allow you to set a domain specific policy, if you do not want to confirm each cookie for that domain.

Accept all cookies

  If this option is selected, all cookies will be accepted without asking for confirmation.

Reject all cookies

  If this option is selected, all cookies will be rejected without asking for confirmation.

In addition to the default policy for handling of cookies, which you can set by selecting one of the three options described above, you can also set policies for specific host domains using the controls in the Domain Specific group.

The Ask, Accept, or Reject policy can be applied to a specific domain by clicking on the Add... button, which brings up a dialog. In this dialog, you can type the name of the domain (with a leading dot), then select the policy you want to apply to this domain. Note that entries may also get added while you are browsing, if the default policy is to ask for confirmation, and you choose a general policy for a specific host (for example, by selecting Reject all cookies from this domain when asked to confirm a cookie.)

You can also select a specific host domain from the list, and click the Change... button to choose a different policy for that domain than the one shown in the list.

To delete a domain specific policy, choose a domain from the list, and then click the Delete button. The default policy will apply to domains which have been deleted from the list.

If you have previously exported cookie policies to a file, you can merge those policies with the ones listed by clicking on the Import... button and selecting the file. To create a compressed archive file of the cookie policies shown in the list, click on the Export... and save the file to a location of your choice.

## 5.7.2. Management

In the Management tab you can browse and selectively delete cookies that have been set in the past.

In the upper part of this dialog you can see a list of domains, displayed as a tree. Click on the little + next to a domain to see all cookies that have been set for this particular target domain. If you select one of these cookies, you'll notice that its contents will show up in the frame Cookie details below.

By clicking the Delete button you can now delete the selected cookie. Click Delete all to delete all cookies stored.

## 5.7.3. Section Author

This section written by:

Krishna Tateneni `<tateneni@pluto.njcc.com>`.

Jost Schenck `<jost@schenck.de>`.

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