Cookie scanning

[Guest]

I'm not sure that this is the place to post general suggestions, so please
fell free to redirect me if this is the case.

I would like to see an area improved in Windows Defender that it is sorely
lacking and that's it's non-existant ability to scan cookies and eliminate
tracking cookies.

Ever since Microsoft Anti-Spyware was introduced, I've always had to rely on
Lavasoft Ad-Aware installed as well. It never finds anything else on my PC,
but everytime I run it after a few hours on the net, it always finds a couple
of tracking cookies to eliminate. Windows Defender "NEVER" scans for these
and removes them.

It would be a nice addition for those of us seeking to have a more complete
solution from one product.

Otherwise, I'm real happy with the new design.

I was thinking about using Windows Defender in our work environment since
we'll be able to install it and manage it over group policy once the final is
released.

 

[Tom Emmelot]

Hi Will,

cookies are well handled in IE6 and even better in IE7, so look there to
handle these cookies in the "Internet Options".

Regards >*< TOM >*<

Will Rosensteel schreef:

 

[Guest]

Tom,

That's not what I'm asking. I'm panning to deploy this in the workplace and
I have to treat every user as if they know absolutely nothing about the
maintenance and security of their PC. I do not wish to set up IE to block a
bunch of cookies as it detracts from much of it's functionality. Besides, we
have a proxy server that does a pretty good job of keeping them off of
websites that land those types of cookies on their PC's. There are some,
however, that get through and those are the ones I'd like to see scannned and
removed by the product. If the anti-spyware cannot scan these, it's not as
effective as it could be.

IE6 and IE7 (which I am Beta testing) do not have a way to scan for tracking
cookies. If other anti-spyware programs can do it, certainly Microsoft in all
of it's infinite software engineering can devise a way to do the same.

Thanks for the reply though.

Will

 

[Tom Emmelot]

Hello Will,

I know that MS not want to burn there hands on 3e party cookies, so they
let him on your PC.
I use Trend Internet security 14 and on the spy ware scan he takes out
these cookies and data miners. But who knows MS change there policy on this!

Regards >*< TOM >*<

Will Rosensteel schreef:

 

[Guest]

Blocking all Third-party cookies with Internet Explorer 6 or 7 has never
caused me any issues with browsing. I use the Privacy tab, Advanced button,
'Override default cookie handling' setting to Block Third-party cookies,
which I would assume has an equivalent Group Policy setting. This creates no
pop-ups or other changes to what the user sees, so it's a perfect way to
avoid ever having to deal with these again. Removing these after the fact is
basically a waste of time, since they already performed their function during
the user's browsing session.

You can still leave First-party cookies set to Allow, which doesn't change
anything in regards to cookies that affect site access or experience. I
prefer to Prompt for these, but that can create a fair amount of requests to
allow or block, especially shortly after the change.

The above abilities are the reason that cookies are ignored by Defender and
likely always will be.

Bitman

 

[plun]

Hi Bitman

Within every HijackThis forum you can see how well
cookie handling works.

With IE7 it´s better but still leaves openings.

MS uses 3rd party cookies themselves within these newsgroups.
And they passes with IE7.........????

There is no need for "cocknuts" and ads.......

regards
plun

 

[Guest]

Plun,

The HijackThis forums I frequent don't waste their time on cookies, so I'm
not sure what you're referring to. I have seen you mentiion something about
malware purveyors using cookies to track infected machines, but I've never
been certain what your concern is, since the infection itself and what
allowed it on the PC in the first place would be mine.

I'm also not certain why you've had problems with the IE Third-party cookie
blocking, since mine has always worked flawlessly. No cookie I've blocked has
ever been written to the PC including Third-party or First-party using
Prompt, unless I have clicked 'Allow' in haste by mistake.

On this site, using either IE 6 or 7, I'm consistently blocking a
Third-party Tracking cookie from 'm.webtrends.com' which I double-checked and
confirmed by looking in both the cookies and Temporary Internet files folders.

I'm not certain what is causing you to be unable to block these correctly.
Is it possible you haven't cleared out the existing cookies after changing
them to Block? This is a known issue with IE 6 that may still affect IE 7, I
haven't tested it myself.

Inability to properly Block Third-party cookies is a well known issue with
Firefox, often mentioned in the Spybot S&D forums, but once configured to
Block Third-party Tracking cookies I've never heard the same complaint for
Internet Explorer.

Bitman

 

[plun]

Hi Bitman

What I mean you sees them within for example a Ewido scan log.........
Sex trackers, Botnet trackers and so on.
You can directly see what sort of users it is out of
a Ewido scan log.

So for me 3rd party cookies are "junk".
A "braindead" technology.

Just use them as "first party" needed cookie
everything else is something the ads industry
invented and they must create new business models.

IMHO

regards
plun

 

[Guest]

Guys,

The whole point is this:

Tracking cookies do what? They track! The give their creators a way to track
your surfing habits. Is that not an invasion of your privacy? Yes, it is.
Therefore, it's a form a spying on you without your knowledge. Flat out, a
tracking cookie is spyware and needs to be scanned for and removed.

You can argue this and that about using IE to handle cookies, but in many
environments, not only is that incredibly tidious, but just not feasible. My
user base has highly managed pc's, but outside of the company proxy, they are
permitted to surf websites that many other companies block. Why you say? For
some companies, this is called work-life balance and as a human resource
directive, it's not something I can fight.

I need a complete spyware product that will also scan for these spying
cookies. Windows defender has a lot of promise, but for Microsoft not to
acknowledge that these cookies are potentially harmful (even resulting in
increased spam on the Exchange servers, is absolutely ludicrous and careless.

Microsoft is pretty close on this one as far as I'm concerned, but if they
choose to igbore an area that has potential for harm, I'll have to recommend
to our directors that we go elsewhere for a product that will. I'll continue
to test it and hope for the best that they'll eventually see a need for this.

 

[Jeff]

I agree with Will wholeheartedly; This is SPYING and it is unacceptable.
Again;his point about people saying to use IE this way or that to stop
cookies is correct to. The use of IE to stop cookies shouldn't even need to
be brought up at all. It's SPYING and its wrong. I hope other
people-including organizations and companies realize this. Until Microsoft
acknowledges the problem and addresses it; I'm not using Defender at all.At
least AdAware gives you the opportunity to catch spying. In fact;through
creative use of their FREE product; I have been able to eliminate cookies
from even showing up on my home pc ever again. Again, a tedious process at
best; and probably not workable in a corporate enviroment;but at least at
home I've been able to deal with cookies without excuses about using IE and
with excellent results.

 

[Guest]

If your environment is so 'highly managed', why are you allowing Tracking
(Third-party) cookies at all? They are completely unnecessary to the access
or operation of anything but the Tracking web sites themselves. I've never
ever had anyone show me that a Tracking cookie was required to access a site.
Only First-party cookies have this distinction.

This is why Internet Explorer 6 and up allows you to completely block all
Third-party Tracking cookies and separately decide how to handle First-party
cookies; Allow, Block or Prompt. With this setting and one last clearing of
all [Tracking] cookies, you'll never again save a Tracking cookie, so
removing them with another tool is absolutely unnecessary since there won't
be any.

If you can't see from this why cookie removal via scanning and 'cleaning' is
a totally pointless waste of time and effort, I can't help you, nor can
anyone.

Bitman

 

[plun]

Hi

It´s not pointless beacuse every time a tracking cookie is destroyd
a new one must be created and all meaningsless ads statistics destroyd.

So thats good if everyone removes this junk.

The ads director then can "sit with his shit" and find
other ways to get ads money.

And the "botnet owner" need other ways to track his Zombies.

regards
plun

If your environment is so 'highly managed', why are you allowing Tracking
(Third-party) cookies at all? They are completely unnecessary to the access
or operation of anything but the Tracking web sites themselves. I've never
ever had anyone show me that a Tracking cookie was required to access a site.
Only First-party cookies have this distinction.

This is why Internet Explorer 6 and up allows you to completely block all
Third-party Tracking cookies and separately decide how to handle First-party
cookies; Allow, Block or Prompt. With this setting and one last clearing of
all [Tracking] cookies, you'll never again save a Tracking cookie, so
removing them with another tool is absolutely unnecessary since there won't
be any.

If you can't see from this why cookie removal via scanning and 'cleaning' is
a totally pointless waste of time and effort, I can't help you, nor can
anyone.

Bitman

Guys,

The whole point is this:

Tracking cookies do what? They track! The give their creators a way to track
your surfing habits. Is that not an invasion of your privacy? Yes, it is.
Therefore, it's a form a spying on you without your knowledge. Flat out, a
tracking cookie is spyware and needs to be scanned for and removed.

You can argue this and that about using IE to handle cookies, but in many
environments, not only is that incredibly tidious, but just not feasible. My
user base has highly managed pc's, but outside of the company proxy, they
are permitted to surf websites that many other companies block. Why you
say? For some companies, this is called work-life balance and as a human
resource directive, it's not something I can fight.

I need a complete spyware product that will also scan for these spying
cookies. Windows defender has a lot of promise, but for Microsoft not to
acknowledge that these cookies are potentially harmful (even resulting in
increased spam on the Exchange servers, is absolutely ludicrous and
careless.

Microsoft is pretty close on this one as far as I'm concerned, but if they
choose to igbore an area that has potential for harm, I'll have to recommend
to our directors that we go elsewhere for a product that will. I'll continue
to test it and hope for the best that they'll eventually see a need for
this.

 

[Guest]

Plun,

Setting Internet Explorer 6 to BLOCK Tracking cookies means they don't ever
get written on your PC in the first place.

This means they don't exist, so they don't need to be destroyed, making the
effort pointless.

And 'Botnet' owner's always have some way to conrol the systems, so a cookie
isn't really required to 'count' or identify the individual PC. If stopping
Botnets was as easy as blocking cookies, the problem would have ended long
ago.

Bitman

Hi

It´s not pointless beacuse every time a tracking cookie is destroyd
a new one must be created and all meaningsless ads statistics destroyd.

So thats good if everyone removes this junk.

The ads director then can "sit with his shit" and find
other ways to get ads money.

And the "botnet owner" need other ways to track his Zombies.

regards
plun

If your environment is so 'highly managed', why are you allowing Tracking
(Third-party) cookies at all? They are completely unnecessary to the access
or operation of anything but the Tracking web sites themselves. I've never
ever had anyone show me that a Tracking cookie was required to access a site.
Only First-party cookies have this distinction.

This is why Internet Explorer 6 and up allows you to completely block all
Third-party Tracking cookies and separately decide how to handle First-party
cookies; Allow, Block or Prompt. With this setting and one last clearing of
all [Tracking] cookies, you'll never again save a Tracking cookie, so
removing them with another tool is absolutely unnecessary since there won't
be any.

If you can't see from this why cookie removal via scanning and 'cleaning' is
a totally pointless waste of time and effort, I can't help you, nor can
anyone.

Bitman

Guys,

The whole point is this:

Tracking cookies do what? They track! The give their creators a way to track
your surfing habits. Is that not an invasion of your privacy? Yes, it is.
Therefore, it's a form a spying on you without your knowledge. Flat out, a
tracking cookie is spyware and needs to be scanned for and removed.

You can argue this and that about using IE to handle cookies, but in many
environments, not only is that incredibly tidious, but just not feasible. My
user base has highly managed pc's, but outside of the company proxy, they
are permitted to surf websites that many other companies block. Why you
say? For some companies, this is called work-life balance and as a human
resource directive, it's not something I can fight.

I need a complete spyware product that will also scan for these spying
cookies. Windows defender has a lot of promise, but for Microsoft not to
acknowledge that these cookies are potentially harmful (even resulting in
increased spam on the Exchange servers, is absolutely ludicrous and
careless.

Microsoft is pretty close on this one as far as I'm concerned, but if they
choose to igbore an area that has potential for harm, I'll have to recommend
to our directors that we go elsewhere for a product that will. I'll continue
to test it and hope for the best that they'll eventually see a need for
this.

:

Hi Bitman

What I mean you sees them within for example a Ewido scan log.........
Sex trackers, Botnet trackers and so on.
You can directly see what sort of users it is out of
a Ewido scan log.

So for me 3rd party cookies are "junk".
A "braindead" technology.

Just use them as "first party" needed cookie
everything else is something the ads industry
invented and they must create new business models.

IMHO

regards
plun


Plun,

The HijackThis forums I frequent don't waste their time on cookies, so I'm
not sure what you're referring to. I have seen you mentiion something
about malware purveyors using cookies to track infected machines, but
I've never been certain what your concern is, since the infection itself
and what allowed it on the PC in the first place would be mine.

I'm also not certain why you've had problems with the IE Third-party
cookie blocking, since mine has always worked flawlessly. No cookie I've
blocked has ever been written to the PC including Third-party or
First-party using Prompt, unless I have clicked 'Allow' in haste by
mistake.

On this site, using either IE 6 or 7, I'm consistently blocking a
Third-party Tracking cookie from 'm.webtrends.com' which I double-checked
and confirmed by looking in both the cookies and Temporary Internet files
folders.

I'm not certain what is causing you to be unable to block these correctly.
Is it possible you haven't cleared out the existing cookies after changing
them to Block? This is a known issue with IE 6 that may still affect IE 7,
I haven't tested it myself.

Inability to properly Block Third-party cookies is a well known issue with
Firefox, often mentioned in the Spybot S&D forums, but once configured to
Block Third-party Tracking cookies I've never heard the same complaint for
Internet Explorer.

Bitman

:

Hi Bitman

Within every HijackThis forum you can see how well
cookie handling works.

With IE7 it´s better but still leaves openings.

MS uses 3rd party cookies themselves within these newsgroups.
And they passes with IE7.........????

There is no need for "cocknuts" and ads.......

regards
plun

Blocking all Third-party cookies with Internet Explorer 6 or 7 has never
caused me any issues with browsing. I use the Privacy tab, Advanced
button, 'Override default cookie handling' setting to Block Third-party
cookies, which I would assume has an equivalent Group Policy setting.
This creates no pop-ups or other changes to what the user sees, so
it's a perfect way to avoid ever having to deal with these again.
Removing these after the fact is basically a waste of time, since they
already performed their function during the user's browsing session.

You can still leave First-party cookies set to Allow, which doesn't
change anything in regards to cookies that affect site access or
experience. I prefer to Prompt for these, but that can create a fair
amount of requests to allow or block, especially shortly after the
change.

The above abilities are the reason that cookies are ignored by Defender
and likely always will be.

Bitman

:

Tom,

That's not what I'm asking. I'm panning to deploy this in the
workplace and I have to treat every user as if they know absolutely
nothing about the maintenance and security of their PC. I do not wish
to set up IE to block a bunch of cookies as it detracts from much of
it's functionality. Besides, we have a proxy server that does a
pretty good job of keeping them off of websites that land those types
of cookies on their PC's. There are some, however, that get through
and those are the ones I'd like to see scannned and removed by the
product. If the anti-spyware cannot scan these, it's not as
effective as it could be.

IE6 and IE7 (which I am Beta testing) do not have a way to scan for
tracking cookies. If other anti-spyware programs can do it, certainly
Microsoft in all of it's infinite software engineering can devise a
way to do the same.

Thanks for the reply though.

Will

:

Hi Will,

cookies are well handled in IE6 and even better in IE7, so look there
to handle these cookies in the "Internet Options".

Regards >*< TOM >*<

Will Rosensteel schreef:
I'm not sure that this is the place to post general suggestions, so
please fell free to redirect me if this is the case.

I would like to see an area improved in Windows Defender that it is
sorely lacking and that's it's non-existant ability to scan cookies
and eliminate tracking cookies.

Ever since Microsoft Anti-Spyware was introduced, I've always had to
rely on Lavasoft Ad-Aware installed as well. It never finds
anything else on my PC, but everytime I run it after a few hours
on the net, it always finds a couple of tracking cookies to
eliminate. Windows Defender "NEVER" scans for these and removes
them.

It would be a nice addition for those of us seeking to have a more
complete solution from one product.

Otherwise, I'm real happy with the new design.

I was thinking about using Windows Defender in our work environment
since we'll be able to install it and manage it over group policy
once the final is released

 

[plun]

Hi Bitman

If every tracking cookie is removed all statistics
fall in pieces for the ads salesman and thats great

Cookies are then a easy way to collect information
about alive Zombies. Group them with ISPs, areas and real broadband and
so on.

Just to advertise with this information to other "bad guys".
Do you need 1, 10, 1000 maybe 10000 Zombies for a real Botnet attack ?

"Cockonuts"........

regards
plun

Plun,

Setting Internet Explorer 6 to BLOCK Tracking cookies means they don't ever
get written on your PC in the first place.

This means they don't exist, so they don't need to be destroyed, making the
effort pointless.

And 'Botnet' owner's always have some way to conrol the systems, so a cookie
isn't really required to 'count' or identify the individual PC. If stopping
Botnets was as easy as blocking cookies, the problem would have ended long
ago.

Bitman

Hi

It´s not pointless beacuse every time a tracking cookie is destroyd
a new one must be created and all meaningsless ads statistics destroyd.

So thats good if everyone removes this junk.

The ads director then can "sit with his shit" and find
other ways to get ads money.

And the "botnet owner" need other ways to track his Zombies.

regards
plun

If your environment is so 'highly managed', why are you allowing Tracking
(Third-party) cookies at all? They are completely unnecessary to the access
or operation of anything but the Tracking web sites themselves. I've never
ever had anyone show me that a Tracking cookie was required to access a
site. Only First-party cookies have this distinction.

This is why Internet Explorer 6 and up allows you to completely block all
Third-party Tracking cookies and separately decide how to handle
First-party cookies; Allow, Block or Prompt. With this setting and one
last clearing of all [Tracking] cookies, you'll never again save a
Tracking cookie, so removing them with another tool is absolutely
unnecessary since there won't be any.

If you can't see from this why cookie removal via scanning and 'cleaning'
is a totally pointless waste of time and effort, I can't help you, nor can
anyone.

Bitman

:

Guys,

The whole point is this:

Tracking cookies do what? They track! The give their creators a way to
track your surfing habits. Is that not an invasion of your privacy? Yes,
it is. Therefore, it's a form a spying on you without your knowledge.
Flat out, a tracking cookie is spyware and needs to be scanned for and
removed.

You can argue this and that about using IE to handle cookies, but in many
environments, not only is that incredibly tidious, but just not feasible.
My user base has highly managed pc's, but outside of the company proxy,
they are permitted to surf websites that many other companies block. Why
you say? For some companies, this is called work-life balance and as a
human resource directive, it's not something I can fight.

I need a complete spyware product that will also scan for these spying
cookies. Windows defender has a lot of promise, but for Microsoft not to
acknowledge that these cookies are potentially harmful (even resulting in
increased spam on the Exchange servers, is absolutely ludicrous and
careless.

Microsoft is pretty close on this one as far as I'm concerned, but if they
choose to igbore an area that has potential for harm, I'll have to
recommend to our directors that we go elsewhere for a product that will.
I'll continue to test it and hope for the best that they'll eventually
see a need for this.

:

Hi Bitman

What I mean you sees them within for example a Ewido scan log.........
Sex trackers, Botnet trackers and so on.
You can directly see what sort of users it is out of
a Ewido scan log.

So for me 3rd party cookies are "junk".
A "braindead" technology.

Just use them as "first party" needed cookie
everything else is something the ads industry
invented and they must create new business models.

IMHO

regards
plun


Plun,

The HijackThis forums I frequent don't waste their time on cookies, so
I'm not sure what you're referring to. I have seen you mentiion
something about malware purveyors using cookies to track infected
machines, but I've never been certain what your concern is, since the
infection itself and what allowed it on the PC in the first place
would be mine.

I'm also not certain why you've had problems with the IE Third-party
cookie blocking, since mine has always worked flawlessly. No cookie
I've blocked has ever been written to the PC including Third-party or
First-party using Prompt, unless I have clicked 'Allow' in haste by
mistake.

On this site, using either IE 6 or 7, I'm consistently blocking a
Third-party Tracking cookie from 'm.webtrends.com' which I
double-checked and confirmed by looking in both the cookies and
Temporary Internet files folders.

I'm not certain what is causing you to be unable to block these
correctly. Is it possible you haven't cleared out the existing cookies
after changing them to Block? This is a known issue with IE 6 that may
still affect IE 7, I haven't tested it myself.

Inability to properly Block Third-party cookies is a well known issue
with Firefox, often mentioned in the Spybot S&D forums, but once
configured to Block Third-party Tracking cookies I've never heard the
same complaint for Internet Explorer.

Bitman

:

Hi Bitman

Within every HijackThis forum you can see how well
cookie handling works.

With IE7 it´s better but still leaves openings.

MS uses 3rd party cookies themselves within these newsgroups.
And they passes with IE7.........????

There is no need for "cocknuts" and ads.......

regards
plun

Blocking all Third-party cookies with Internet Explorer 6 or 7 has
never caused me any issues with browsing. I use the Privacy tab,
Advanced button, 'Override default cookie handling' setting to Block
Third-party cookies, which I would assume has an equivalent Group
Policy setting. This creates no pop-ups or other changes to what
the user sees, so it's a perfect way to avoid ever having to deal
with these again. Removing these after the fact is basically a
waste of time, since they already performed their function during
the user's browsing session.

You can still leave First-party cookies set to Allow, which doesn't
change anything in regards to cookies that affect site access or
experience. I prefer to Prompt for these, but that can create a fair
amount of requests to allow or block, especially shortly after the
change.

The above abilities are the reason that cookies are ignored by
Defender and likely always will be.

Bitman

:

Tom,

That's not what I'm asking. I'm panning to deploy this in the
workplace and I have to treat every user as if they know absolutely
nothing about the maintenance and security of their PC. I do not
wish to set up IE to block a bunch of cookies as it detracts from
much of it's functionality. Besides, we have a proxy server that
does a pretty good job of keeping them off of websites that land
those types of cookies on their PC's. There are some, however,
that get through and those are the ones I'd like to see scannned
and removed by the product. If the anti-spyware cannot scan these,
it's not as effective as it could be.

IE6 and IE7 (which I am Beta testing) do not have a way to scan for
tracking cookies. If other anti-spyware programs can do it,
certainly Microsoft in all of it's infinite software engineering
can devise a way to do the same.

Thanks for the reply though.

Will

:

Hi Will,

cookies are well handled in IE6 and even better in IE7, so look
there to handle these cookies in the "Internet Options".

Regards >*< TOM >*<

Will Rosensteel schreef:
I'm not sure that this is the place to post general suggestions, so
please fell free to redirect me if this is the case.

I would like to see an area improved in Windows Defender that it is
sorely lacking and that's it's non-existant ability to scan
cookies and eliminate tracking cookies.

Ever since Microsoft Anti-Spyware was introduced, I've always had
to rely on Lavasoft Ad-Aware installed as well. It never finds
anything else on my PC, but everytime I run it after a few hours
on the net, it always finds a couple of tracking cookies to
eliminate. Windows Defender "NEVER" scans for these and removes
them.

It would be a nice addition for those of us seeking to have a more
complete solution from one product.

Otherwise, I'm real happy with the new design.

I was thinking about using Windows Defender in our work environment
since we'll be able to install it and manage it over group policy
once the final is released

 

[Guest]

Bitman,

I decided to run a test with "blocking third party cookies". I'm running IE7
at home and set it to block them and started cruising the net as normal. No
porn sites, no horoscopes, hack, or ecard sites. Gues what, Lavasoft Adaware
found 3 Data Mining cookies at the end of a two hour session. In short, it
found spyware on my PC. Windows Defender did not. Blocking third party
cookies is not effective as a solution.

I've been reading some other posts out there and I'm sorry to say that the
acceptance of data miners on your PC as "ok" to have and not scan is
unacceptable.
Data miners can be a serious threat to your privacy and if blocking third
party cookies is not the anwser, then MS had better think seriously about
doing it with Defender.

If I remeber correctly, Giant Antispyware did scan cookies. Why in the world
would they remove that capability? I'm sure that some software engineer there
has the smarts to build that into the program. Come on MS, you may be able to
pass this software off to the average user, but professional techs and admins
are going to see it's short comings. Listen to your certified folks!

Plun,

Setting Internet Explorer 6 to BLOCK Tracking cookies means they don't ever
get written on your PC in the first place.

This means they don't exist, so they don't need to be destroyed, making the
effort pointless.

And 'Botnet' owner's always have some way to conrol the systems, so a cookie
isn't really required to 'count' or identify the individual PC. If stopping
Botnets was as easy as blocking cookies, the problem would have ended long
ago.

Bitman

Hi

It´s not pointless beacuse every time a tracking cookie is destroyd
a new one must be created and all meaningsless ads statistics destroyd.

So thats good if everyone removes this junk.

The ads director then can "sit with his shit" and find
other ways to get ads money.

And the "botnet owner" need other ways to track his Zombies.

regards
plun

If your environment is so 'highly managed', why are you allowing Tracking
(Third-party) cookies at all? They are completely unnecessary to the access
or operation of anything but the Tracking web sites themselves. I've never
ever had anyone show me that a Tracking cookie was required to access a site.
Only First-party cookies have this distinction.

This is why Internet Explorer 6 and up allows you to completely block all
Third-party Tracking cookies and separately decide how to handle First-party
cookies; Allow, Block or Prompt. With this setting and one last clearing of
all [Tracking] cookies, you'll never again save a Tracking cookie, so
removing them with another tool is absolutely unnecessary since there won't
be any.

If you can't see from this why cookie removal via scanning and 'cleaning' is
a totally pointless waste of time and effort, I can't help you, nor can
anyone.

Bitman

:

Guys,

The whole point is this:

Tracking cookies do what? They track! The give their creators a way to track
your surfing habits. Is that not an invasion of your privacy? Yes, it is.
Therefore, it's a form a spying on you without your knowledge. Flat out, a
tracking cookie is spyware and needs to be scanned for and removed.

You can argue this and that about using IE to handle cookies, but in many
environments, not only is that incredibly tidious, but just not feasible. My
user base has highly managed pc's, but outside of the company proxy, they
are permitted to surf websites that many other companies block. Why you
say? For some companies, this is called work-life balance and as a human
resource directive, it's not something I can fight.

I need a complete spyware product that will also scan for these spying
cookies. Windows defender has a lot of promise, but for Microsoft not to
acknowledge that these cookies are potentially harmful (even resulting in
increased spam on the Exchange servers, is absolutely ludicrous and
careless.

Microsoft is pretty close on this one as far as I'm concerned, but if they
choose to igbore an area that has potential for harm, I'll have to recommend
to our directors that we go elsewhere for a product that will. I'll continue
to test it and hope for the best that they'll eventually see a need for
this.

:

Hi Bitman

What I mean you sees them within for example a Ewido scan log.........
Sex trackers, Botnet trackers and so on.
You can directly see what sort of users it is out of
a Ewido scan log.

So for me 3rd party cookies are "junk".
A "braindead" technology.

Just use them as "first party" needed cookie
everything else is something the ads industry
invented and they must create new business models.

IMHO

regards
plun


Plun,

The HijackThis forums I frequent don't waste their time on cookies, so I'm
not sure what you're referring to. I have seen you mentiion something
about malware purveyors using cookies to track infected machines, but
I've never been certain what your concern is, since the infection itself
and what allowed it on the PC in the first place would be mine.

I'm also not certain why you've had problems with the IE Third-party
cookie blocking, since mine has always worked flawlessly. No cookie I've
blocked has ever been written to the PC including Third-party or
First-party using Prompt, unless I have clicked 'Allow' in haste by
mistake.

On this site, using either IE 6 or 7, I'm consistently blocking a
Third-party Tracking cookie from 'm.webtrends.com' which I double-checked
and confirmed by looking in both the cookies and Temporary Internet files
folders.

I'm not certain what is causing you to be unable to block these correctly.
Is it possible you haven't cleared out the existing cookies after changing
them to Block? This is a known issue with IE 6 that may still affect IE 7,
I haven't tested it myself.

Inability to properly Block Third-party cookies is a well known issue with
Firefox, often mentioned in the Spybot S&D forums, but once configured to
Block Third-party Tracking cookies I've never heard the same complaint for
Internet Explorer.

Bitman

:

Hi Bitman

Within every HijackThis forum you can see how well
cookie handling works.

With IE7 it´s better but still leaves openings.

MS uses 3rd party cookies themselves within these newsgroups.
And they passes with IE7.........????

There is no need for "cocknuts" and ads.......

regards
plun

Blocking all Third-party cookies with Internet Explorer 6 or 7 has never
caused me any issues with browsing. I use the Privacy tab, Advanced
button, 'Override default cookie handling' setting to Block Third-party
cookies, which I would assume has an equivalent Group Policy setting.
This creates no pop-ups or other changes to what the user sees, so
it's a perfect way to avoid ever having to deal with these again.
Removing these after the fact is basically a waste of time, since they
already performed their function during the user's browsing session.

You can still leave First-party cookies set to Allow, which doesn't
change anything in regards to cookies that affect site access or
experience. I prefer to Prompt for these, but that can create a fair
amount of requests to allow or block, especially shortly after the
change.

The above abilities are the reason that cookies are ignored by Defender
and likely always will be.

Bitman

:

Tom,

That's not what I'm asking. I'm panning to deploy this in the
workplace and I have to treat every user as if they know absolutely
nothing about the maintenance and security of their PC. I do not wish
to set up IE to block a bunch of cookies as it detracts from much of
it's functionality. Besides, we have a proxy server that does a
pretty good job of keeping them off of websites that land those types
of cookies on their PC's. There are some, however, that get through
and those are the ones I'd like to see scannned and removed by the
product. If the anti-spyware cannot scan these, it's not as
effective as it could be.

IE6 and IE7 (which I am Beta testing) do not have a way to scan for
tracking cookies. If other anti-spyware programs can do it, certainly
Microsoft in all of it's infinite software engineering can devise a
way to do the same.

Thanks for the reply though.

Will

:

Hi Will,

cookies are well handled in IE6 and even better in IE7, so look there
to handle these cookies in the "Internet Options".

Regards >*< TOM >*<

Will Rosensteel schreef:
I'm not sure that this is the place to post general suggestions, so
please fell free to redirect me if this is the case.

I would like to see an area improved in Windows Defender that it is
sorely lacking and that's it's non-existant ability to scan cookies
and eliminate tracking cookies.

Ever since Microsoft Anti-Spyware was introduced, I've always had to
rely on Lavasoft Ad-Aware installed as well. It never finds
anything else on my PC, but everytime I run it after a few hours
on the net, it always finds a couple of tracking cookies to
eliminate. Windows Defender "NEVER" scans for these and removes
them.

It would be a nice addition for those of us seeking to have a more
complete solution from one product.

Otherwise, I'm real happy with the new design.

I was thinking about using Windows Defender in our work environment
since we'll be able to install it and manage it over group policy
once the final is released