Can my cookies be read by other sites? I have a ZoneAlarm firewall set to stealth for the internet and my browser is set to medium high privacy. I was just wondering.

Thanks.

Probably. You can set cookies ( under privacy) to block all cookies, check allow session cookies, then use edit button to allow only certain cookies to bypass block; type in ebay.com for instance and click allow. Delete all cookis before closing browser and running spybot, adaware, etc. Frank

I don't know if firewalls can stop this but yes, sites you visit can read your passed surf history.

Get the free program, Spybot from.....
http://www.safer-networking.org

Update the program before you run it. Read up on the program before you delete anything as being reported as spyware. Windows can remember your settings for various files and folders, and this is not really spyware.

Cookies, however, and crap installed by some software can, and does! collect your username, location in the Country, Postcode, E-mail address etc and it is sold or given away to advertisers.

I have re-formatted & re-installed Windows on a spare PC in the last few weeks.

Running Spybot found loads of crap even though this PC has never been on the Internet. I use it to 'try out' some 'free' programs so as not to mess up my main PC.

Some of the rubbish installed without my knowledge was....
COMMON NAME
N-CASE
TYPELIB
ALEXA
DSO EXPLOIT
BABELE.AGENT IE

I am checking the net to see what these bugs do.

As I understand it, some cookies can only be read by the site that placed it. There are spyware cookies which can be read by multiple sites for nefarious purposes. A good discussion of cookies is here:

http://www.pestpatrol.com/Support/About/About_Cookies.asp

I use a free program called CookieWall from analogx.com to manage all cookies. If you set it to alert you before accepting any cookie, none can be placed on your computer without your permission.

Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware both remove spyware cookies. SpywareBlaster prevents most spyware cookies.

I found a Spyware Blacklist and manually entered every one of them so i know I dont hae spyware cookies. I downloaded spyware s&d and SpyBot and updated them. So my computer is completely Spyware free. And thanks for the links. Ill check them out.