Try this setting to see just how many cookies are being placed on your computer by nearly every site you visit. I was astonished: In Internet Explorer (not sure of the setting in Netscape) go to Tools...Internet Options...Privacy. Then click the Advanced button and make it prompt for cookies (see attached screen print). I leave my setting like this all the time now and block nearly all of them.
Have you ever tried this...they have a free version....download and clean those cookies out. http://www.lavasoft.de/
In my opinion, cookies are pervasive and a very minimal threat. Here are some typical examples of why a web surfer gets so many cookies: Many sites have "web analytics" software installed that sets cookies on your machine so that the web server can track your movements in a general sense throughout the site. This gives web developers the ability to see what areas of the site get the most traffic and the path that the majority of users took to get there. You'll also find that cookies are served by just about any site that runs advertisements. This lets the ad server know which ads it has served you and which ones it hasn't in an effort to keep repetition down to a minimum. Sites like Elite Trader that are membership-based will definitely use cookies. Without cookies, there would be no way to recognize that you are a member and that you are logged in. Finally, any site that has a shopping cart will also use cookies, as they enable a site to keep track of what's in your shopping cart when you are ready to check out. The fact is that anyone who uses the web regularly will get cookies written to their hard drives on a daily basis, but I would argue that the reason for those cookies is a lot more honest, and much less of a security threat, than most people think.
Baron, I agree with you that in most cases the use of cookies is honest and necessary. I was just shocked at the sheer number of cookies trying to get on my PC from sites I wasn't even visiting. For example, when I changed my cookie setting to "prompt" and went to the "Hot Girls of CNBC" thread on ET, cnbcasia.com tried to put a cookie on my machine because someone utilized the link to their site for the picture. I'm sure the cookie is innocuous, but I see no reason for it to be there. And the local site around here, Boston.com, tries to put no less than 6 different cookies from different sites on your machine from one visit to the homepage. Anyway, I wasn't enouraging anyone to do anything but be aware of this just for the surprise of it.
Once, I set my settings to prompt me everytime a cookie was being put on my PC, and I spent wasteless minutes clicking ok. It was like being fired at with an ak47, with an unlimited clip. It's fun just to try!!! But you'll stop it real quick, cause it gets real annoying. I thought I was the only one that played around with that stuff.
Try it again and use the check box that says "apply my decision to all cookies from this website". Then your block or allow choice applies to every subsequent cookie from the domain listed in the popup. Maybe this choice is only in IE 6. I don't know.