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I use a program called Cookie Pal from Kookaburra Software. It only runs under the MS operating systems, but it gives me that functionality.

Give it a try! I have no connection with this company other than the fact that I use their software.

... This is one of my pet hates on websites -- being bugged by new cookies with every single page -- and rapidly makes an otherwise good website too annoying to bother with.

[...] every damn time I read something about good comercial software here, most people just complain that it's not free!

Point is, no, there are some radicals out there who insist on using 100% Free Software, and I can see that POV, but I think there are a number of folks who don't mind paying good money for good produce. Personally, I get ticked at people who try to enforce a monopoly on me. On the other hand, I'm also about to throw Netscape off my box, frankly because it sucks and there's better stuff (Mozilla, Galeon, Konqueror) out there, and the number of sites that need the Real True Netscape is fast approaching zero. (It may be zero alreddie, I just haven't confirmed that to my satisfaction yet.)

Don't make me subscribe, don't force-bundle software on me, particularly if it sucks, don't cost me an arm and a leg (Photoshop), I'm happy.

--
These are my ideas, you can't have them

KookaBurra Software sells a product called "Cookie Pal" that allows you to filter cookies and responses to cookies in real time. Extremely configurable, shareware, inexpensive, works on MSWindows operating systems.
It can work with Netscape and Explorer simultaneously. I've been using it on my windows boxen for years quite happily.
--Charlie

The neat part is that it can play sounds when it sets or rejects cookies. It has these wonderful farting sounds for rejected cookies....

'Course, DoubleClick can be fooled by having cookies disabled, a JunkBuster proxy, or whatever, but I'd imagine at this point only a tiny percentage of users are sufficiently clued to use JunkBuster or Cookie Pal. Certainly too few to make the count less accurate than sampling.

I have been Using a Program called CookiePal for years to control the cookies I allow on my machine in Windows. You can also opt-out of doubleclick. Although if you don't allow them to use cookies it doesn't matter.
The only Banner Ad blockers thatI have seen simply prevent the display of pictures that are standard banner size: x pixels by x pixels.

Of course, it's a Windoze-only solution; works with the following browsers according to their web site:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.x, 4.x and 5.x
• Netscape Navigator 3.x and 4.x
• Opera 3.x (Limited support - View and Delete cookies only)
• America Online 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 for Windows 95/98
• CompuServe WinCIM 3.0.1 and 4.0 and CompuServe 2000.
• Symantec Internet FastFind
• Headliner

Costs a couple bucks after a trial period. To paraphrase JWZ, other solutions are free only only if your time is worthless ...

Better yet, install a cookie monitor utility such as Cookie Pal. I've been using it for almost a year, and I love it.


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or for netscape users try a not completely free one that's been around a bit.
Cookie Pal

Try Cookie Pal.

Very simple, intuitive cookie filtering. Blows all other solution mentioned here out of the water. Junkbuster proxy? Ugh. Browser cookie prefs? Ugh. CPal does site wildcards, end-of-session overrides, everything on the fly. Totally worth the few bucks.

Alas, Windoze MSIE/NS only. And it doesn't support Opera completely, but it will once 4.0 is released.

As a happy user of CookiePal I recommend it as a cookie filter for windows users. Pops up a window when first seeing a cookie from a new site - you select to allow, deny, forever deny, or forever allow. Also lets you edit your view/delete your existing cookies.
You make the settings once, it applies them regardless of the browser you are using.
Here's a review of version 1.0 (version 1.5 current). Its not free, but its cheap. $15 USD.

If you're a windows user like I'm forced to be, I strongly recommend AtGuard. It was recently bought out by Symantec, but I think you can still get trial versions and stuff.

The way this thing works is that it scans TCP/IP requests and never transmits the ones matching a certain pattern. I end up seeing less than 0.1% of the banner ads on the 'net, and when I do see one, I just add the relevant pattern to my block list and never see ads from that site again.

AtGuard also does one more amazing thing -- it stops animated GIFs from looping. About time!!

Along with AtGuard I use Cookie Pal. It basically intercepts the Netscape or IE cookie request dialog, and handles it. What makes it better than Netscape or IE is:

1. It keeps a list of sites to accept / reject with wildcards. I reject anything from *.doubleclick.net for example. Once that site is in your list, you never get asked about cookies from that site again.
2. On sites not found in your lists it asks: "Accept a cookie from www.spamsite.net?" with the options "Yes, No, Always, Never" and a checkbox allowing you to apply the always/never rules to *.spamsite.net. This flexibility far exceeds what browsers can do with their one-time Yes / No capability.

Eventually (once it's more stable and I have more time) I plan to get Mozilla and, if someone hasn't done it first, add all these features to the source. At one point I had read enough of the Mozilla source to know how to stop the animated GIFs but I never got around to adding the changes. Until then these tools are amazing and I can't recommend them enough.

Moderators: I know this is endorsement of commercial Windows products by a Windows user. I know it's not accompanied by the requisite amount of Slashdot Windows trashing or anti-commercial ranting, but let's face it, many of us have to use Windows, and many of us are willing to pay a few bucks for a good commercial tool when there's no open source alternative. Please help me get the word out and help people regain their privacy and freedom from advertising by bumping this up a couple of points. (And no, I'm not associated with either product, just a happy user).

It also allows to always or never accept a particular cookie. I have found this to be very useful, because there are some sites that I need to go to that require cookies.

*I am in no way associated with Kookaburra Software, except that I use their software.

Cookie Pal may be downloaded directly from the vendor, Kookaburra Software.

www.kburra.com has a Win95/WinNT shareware utility called Cookie Pal which will let you police and control cookies on a site-by-site basis.


...phil

I think one of the greatest dangers of cookies is that right now they're insecure an invisible.

I had a friend who had his browser set up to accept all cookies. I was ranting to him one day about how I hate being forced to accept cookies at some sites, and how I nearly always refuse to accept them. He decided to check out his cookie file. Guess what he found...

Some site (I don't remember the offender) had set a cookie that contained a ridiculous amount of information about him: full name, home phone number, home address, job title, etc. Obviously he had filled out some kind of form at some point and they just dumped the info into a cookie. This meant that without his knowledge, every time he used their website, all of his personal info was being sent back and forth in plain text.

A system that allows this kind of abuse is seriously flawed.

I don't think it's time to rewrite the whole cookie spec -- and I don't like the alternatives to cookies either, but this current situation isn't acceptable.

What I'd like to see is some "cookie" icon in the statusbar of your browser that's shown whenever the site you're communicating with is using cookies, and clicking on that "cookie" would give the full cookie details.

I also think that all new browsers should have cookie filtering built in. I don't mind accepting any cookie from Slashdot.org, but I don't want to accept a single cookie from doubleclick. I'd also like to see some content based filtering available. This would allow me to refuse cookies that try to do dumb things like store my password in the cookie.

In the mean time, I'll keep plugging Cookie Pal for Windows users. It does a great job of filtering and handling cookies, and is very unintrusive and small. I'm a satisfied user, but don't have anything to do with the company other than that.

Cookie Pal intercepts all cookie-setting attempts as they happen and lets you decide on a site-by-site basis whether to accept the cookie or not. It also lets you set wildcards so anything from *.doubleclick.net is rejected, and *.slashdot.org is accepted. Mine has a huge list of auto-reject sites, a small list of auto-accept sites. If the site I'm visiting isn't in either list, Cookie Pal prompts me with 4 options: Accept Always, Reject Always, Accept This Time, Reject This Time. I could just as easily have it auto-reject or auto-accept sites not in my lists. It's a very lightweight program with a simple but effective UI that I can't recommend enough.

AtGuard takes care of the banner ads (although it can do a lot more than that). It is basically a transparent firewall. Some of the more useful features: block images based on whole or partial URL matching (anything from doubleclick is rejected as is anything matching "*ad/*"), block HTTP_REFERRER fields, prevent animated gifs from looping...

Thanks to these tools I haven't seen an unwanted banner ad or animated gif in months, and the only cookies I have are the really useful ones that store preferences or enable shopping carts, etc.

I want to see if I can add some of these features to Mozilla (when I get more time) so everyone can have them available and so the internet-ad economy collapses. Call me a luddite, but I really miss the days when it was unheard of to even have a bit of promotional text on your web page.

I don't block the servers using a host file, even though I do have TweakDUN, because then the sites I visit don't get the revenue from the impression at all. I mean, if everybody set the ad servers to 127.0.0.1, all the sites that rely on ad revenue, and that's most of the good ones, would probably go under, and I don't want that to happen.