Advice to delete all my cookies

[Walter Mitty]

Several times, when I have inquired about a bug in a web site,  the first bit of technical advice I get is to try deleting all my cookies.  I don't want to do that because I think it would bring a lot of unintended consequences.  Basically, I would have to remember a whole bunch of logins and settings, in order to put things back the way I want them.

Am I being unreasonable here?  Is the advice generally good advice?  Do you do that when tech support advises you to?  How much work is it to replace the good cookies?  Why can't they tell me to delete just one cookie?

[datagirl]

Hi, Walter.

I'm with you that it's a total pain in the posterior to recover from a "delete all cookies" event.  I think it's either ignorance or laziness, but it's not uncommon for technical support to have this on their troubleshooting checklist.  I don't know if it's unreasonable to ask for more details to target a particular culprit.

I belong to many sites where I have to register.  I try to use the same email address for those and keep a little notebook with the list of sites, usernames, passwords, etc., but often forget to keep it updated.  Sometimes I can fish the old registration email out of a "keep" folder, but often I have to do the "forgot username/password" option and jump through whatever security hoops are involved to get/reset that info.

I'm on FireFox version 7.0.1.  In the privacy options is a place to tell it to "remove individual cookies."  The resulting list has the cookies grouped into "folders" from each site.  Going forward this might be helpful, but it's of no use in your present circumstance if your browser makes it difficult to sort or group items by name or date.

I suppose you could "rollback" your system to a previous date, but that would be a last resort type of solution if you don't know when the problem started.

Good luck.  Let us know what you decide to do and how it works out.
Regards,
-DG

[Walter Mitty]

For the particular problem that led me to post this,  I'm just going to live with the bug until they fix it, or until my computer magically adapts.  I'm 90% sure, on the face of it, that they caused the problem when they updated their web mail system, and that thousands of users have the same problem.  I get a similar problem on another computer.

And I'm with you that "first off delete your all your cookies"  is just an item on their checklist.  I'll bet if you asked one of them to delete all their own cookies, the response would be "are you kidding???"

More of "worse is better".

[TRexx]

You might try clearing the cache* as an alternative. That has cured several flaky browser problems for me.

* Has anyone else noticed the number of newscasters and military folks who when referring to a "cache of weapons" pronounce it as "kaSHAY"

[The Gorn]

Walter, here's some specific ideas.

First of all, you don't have to delete all cookies across all sites necessarily if you are having problems with one web site. (This advice applies only to Firefox and other browsers that have this degree of control - IE does not.)

If you insist on using IE then the following two pieces of advice don't apply. (IE gives you little or no control over these things, at least I cannot find a way to control them.)

In Firefox there is a Options screen menu (Privacy tab, "Show Cookies" button) that allows you to see and work with cookies from all web sites. By entering the domain name in the search box in this window you can search for cookies from only the site having problems. Then, you can select those cookies and remove them.

Secondly, for Firefox there are several add-ons for cookie management. One I use is called "Cookie Monster". It not only makes the process of removing cookies for a particular site very easy, but you can do things like temporarily block cookies for the current site and no other.

Secondly - all cookies, including logins to web sites that you visit, expire periodically. Most news sites expire their cookies after 2 weeks or so. The solution here is to use your browser's "remember" feature to save user names and passwords. So there is kind of a philosophic problem with trying to preserve all of your cookies. You simply can't - they are all temporary (just long lived, but not "that" long) by default.

Lastly, TRexx is absolutely right - cached content can mess up some web sites. Clearing the cache (only) often clears up problems.

[PhilFromNY]

The reason they tell you to delete all of your cookies is because it's easier for them. They have a script for each browser on how to delete all cookies. Typically it's a straightforward menu command. Giving instructions on how to delete one cookie will take more of their time and demand a higher level of technical knowledge on both their part and the customer's part.

What operating system and browser are you using? (name/version)

Given that information you might try googling for the answer. Something like: XP IE8 how to delete a cookie

[The Gorn]

^ Phil's right, most tech support would rather inconvenience you than optimize the experience.

But also, most end users are too stupid to follow granular or detailed instructions. So it's a toss-up of blame.

One more thing: most web sites have a bundle of cookie objects, not just "a" cookie. I just logged into Gmail and Cookie Monster shows 17 cookies for either google.com or accounts.google.com.

[benali72]

Just ask them precisely which cookies they want you to delete.  They should easily be able to identify them to you.

Then you can manually delete ONLY those cookies.

With Firefox you have the granular control you need to just delete specific cookies. With IE you can actually do it through the proper folders if you want.

This should work for you.... I've done it with no problems.

[The Gorn]

The question is if the tech support person will accept this or will say "no can help" and hang up.

I would probably feign it and tell them "Ok, I did it" while actually just deleting the cookies for the site. Or whatever.

[PhilFromNY]

Probably first level tech support is working from a script. They may not know or may even be forbidden from telling a customer how to delete a particular cookie or which cookie they should delete. The phone calls are recorded and audited. If they don't follow the script they will be disciplined. It's not a question of providing good tech support. Its about controlling costs.

If you can find where your browser stores cookies you can usually ferret out the one to delete based on the name and url.

[The Gorn]

Right. The takeaway - just play their game and appease them.

[Walter Mitty]

You might try clearing the cache* as an alternative. That has cured several flaky browser problems for me.

* Has anyone else noticed the number of newscasters and military folks who when referring to a "cache of weapons" pronounce it as "kaSHAY"

See the discussion about tar-ZHAY.  Nuff said.

[Walter Mitty]

For the particular case I'm thinking of, I haven't talked to anyone on the phone.  Nor do I want to.

My solution for now is to live with the problem.  There are workarounds.  I can revert to the previous version of the web service.  I can raise the issue in forums, where I get positive feedback from fellow users but no feedback from teachs in charge.

I can wait for the problem to get solved.  I can use my browser's back arrow button instead of using the web's link to return to the invoker. 

I liked the suggestion to find out which specific cookie to delete.  I use IE, so I have no tools in there. 
But I can navigate files and folders, if somebody gives me the path.

[The Gorn]

Well, you should try Firefox (unless it simply does not work with this web site). It gives you more control to do exactly what you should be trying to fix the problem.

I agree that I also would not be thrilled to dump all of my cookies. There is username and password and form memory in both IE and Firefox but the feature in Firefox has a lot more flexibility.

[I D Shukhov]

What I do is this:  I have a shortcut that launches Chrome in "incognito" mode, so it doesn't save any cookies.  That's what I use for general surfing. When I want to read my email or post here, I launch Chrome in regular mode.  Every so often I delete all the cookies I don't care about.  It only takes a minute.