Since friday iv'e been plagued with a variety of tracking cookies.I have repeatedly used my virus scanner ( Bullguard ) to remove them,only for them to reapear the next time i'm on msn or trying to retrieve e-mails.The problems they caused - could'nt read e-mails or sign into some sites including BM. I have now sorted ( hopefully ) this out.Has anyone else had this problem recently ?                                                                                                                                                                             

  Thankfully I've only got the chocolate chip variety lol   I've never heard of 'tracking' cookies, let's hope it's not going to become widespread.                                                                                                                                                                              

Cookies are actually harmless text files that certain web sites will place onto the hard drive of your computer. Your Internet Browser will then load the information into memory while you are visiting their site. The Cookie itself, actually takes up very little space and acts as an identification card for the visiting site.

Online Shopping sites can use cookies to keep track of items that you add to their shopping carts and quick checkout options. The cookie will keep track of every item that you add to the shopping cart while you continue to browse through different pages or even entirely different sections of their site. Every item you add is stored within the Web site’s database along with a unique ID value that has been assigned to you. Therefore, when you select the check out option, the site automatically knows what items are in your cart by retrieving those selections from its database.

This is why sites such as Amazon or eBay will prompt you to enable cookies in case you have disabled them.

Tracking cookies are benign. which is why AV programs don't delete them by default.
                                                                                                                                                                             

  Ta Blues, altho I know what cookies are I thought moongoose meant something bad, dunno who's the 'blondest' me or him                                                                                                                                                                              

No kwak i'm not blond - fair and flesh coloured hair.Blonds abilities only apply to women anyhow. Cookies are supposed to help you - these did'nt.                                                                                                                                                                             

  mongoose I was refering to your brain not your hair colour, and I hope I didn't offend, I was just kidding. Who made that rule up? In my world 'blonde' applies to both genders.  No favouritism here                                                                                                                                                                               

Cookies can be bad and malicious if programmed a certain way.  BM doesn't rely heavily on cookies, in fact it only remembers  2 things about you - your user ID and what's know as a "Salt" which I wont explain.  The combination of the 2 log you in next time you arrive at BM.   I suggest you go into Internet Explorer Options (if you're using IE, which you should be - version 8 and no lower).  From there, select Delete. Select relevant options and wipe it clean.   Then get a real antivirus installed... what the hell is Bullguard?  Get Mcafee or Norton, etc   Remember that most malicous software these days is spread through fake "security" software.  People who have a virus search the internet for the first free virus scanner they can find - and 99% of the time it's actually fake and full of more viruses (I know MANY people who have fallen for this cos it's always me that ends up fixing it all).                                                                                                                                                                             

I use Avast , is that termed as a good anti virus? It seems to have served me well for the last 6 years or so .                                                                                                                                                                             

Hi Matt,Bullguard security has been out for a number of years,originates from Scandanavia and has won awards and has been recommended by several PC mags.Personaly i would'nt touch Norton - read too many bad reports,but there again i'm no expert.I can only say that in the three years i've had a computer i've used Bullguard without any problems. I did get my problem of bad or infected cookies sorted by several means - clearing history etc and internet options.                                                                                                                                                                             

I find with these things I just do a sweep of the computer with microsoft security essentials and it finds all the irritating little bleeders and allows you to delete them....it has worked a treat for me. I use AVG it has always been fine......   If you get what you think is a virus. DO NOT TRY TO RESTART. chances are once the PC/ laptop is off you will have anightmare getting it going again, try to isolate it there and then, once scanned and identified, do an internet search on it and then download exact instructions on how to delete it permanently....you may have to delete certain .REG files and you really don't want to delete the wrong one of those.....   After you think you have wiped it out, scan again to make sure.....it may have hidden some where and kicked of all over again...                                                                                                                                                                             

Mcaffe and Norton?? do you want to be nagged to death that you have not entrusted your password and credit card security to them?? Also the auto renewal system used by both McCrappy and Norton is pants as you can't cancel it without jumping through hops. I use Eset myself. never had an issue with it.

The McAfee enterprise version that we use at work is OK, not particularly intrusive at all. But that's because it relies on you being behind a decent firewall. I'd never touch their home offering though, seen a PC completely crippled by it before.
I'm currently using Avast at home, used to use Eset Nod32 and quite liked that one too.

Your virus checker should be the last line of defence anyway though, common sense should stop most nasties. (Don't run programs of dubious origin, make sure you have the latest version of your browser of choice, don't visit dodgy web sites, etc.)

Have used AVG and McAfee - never had a problem with either   Any probs I have are sorted out by the two IT blokes at work, give them poorly lappy in the morning, get it back working all funky again in the afternoon                                                                                                                                                                                 

Tesco usually has a good range aswell as all other super markets.                                                                                                                                                                              

If you are looking for software to get rid of tracking cookies and other related spyware programs I'd recommend using either malware bytes or superantispyware.  We use both of them at work - malware bytes for automatic scanning and SAS if we think that somthing might be amiss on a teachers laptop.  You can download either from the CNET downloads site.  Both are completley free and easy to use.

Sorry i was always referring to enterprise/business versions.  Never touch the crappy home versions of any of these things... too much "automated" nonsense, licence checking, unnecessary nonsense etc.   Mcafee enterprise is on all my machines and works great on 64bit servers too.   Ad-Aware Professional is the best/only decent way of removing crap.                                                                                                                                                                             

I agree with you on that Matt - We use Macafee enterprise as well - But schools like things that are free :)