We recently got broadband (and the speed is wonderful, thank you) but we didn’t install the firewall until last night. I need to know what to expect, because it keeps popping up with “A website is trying to install a cookie or access a cookie. Do you want to permit it?”
Some of the websites I recognize, like when I logged onto SDMB, but others I don’t. Plus we seem to get a lot of them all at once, which I assume will fade as we tell the system to Always Block or Always Allow.
How do I know which ones to permit? Just by recognizing the address?
You are correct that you will be getting fewer alerts as you “train” the firewall. But cookies are not that big a deal, it’s programs that will really give problems. You could always set the alert level a little lower so it didn’t tell you about [i[everything*.
I would expect there to be some setting to accept all cookies, or always ask, or the like. Most browsers IIRC can control this for you, so you wouldn’t have to let your fire wall control this as well. My suggestion would therefore be to set the fire wall to accept all cookies, and set your browser to always ask. However, if you only want to accept cookies of a few sites, it may be easier to ‘train’ your fire wall than your browser, in which case you may want to reverse the settings (browser accept all, fire wall accept none except a few specifically allowed).
I would also expect the fire wall to indicate with the warning whether it is a cookie, Internet access, or something else what the program or server wants.
If you have an external program that wants access, it would almost certainly be something undesirable.
When a program on your computer wants Internet access, my rule of thumb is to refuse it, unless I can see why it would want access. Examples of the latter are your browser, MS Windows update, a specific program that wants to look for an update which you want to allow.
My personal policy is to accept the cookie that most closely matches the name of the site I’m connecting to, and reject the others because they’re most likely advertising and/or trackers. After a couple of days, you’ll begin to recognize the difference.
I use Mozill for my browser, so I use the built-in cookie manager. I’ve not seen ZoneAlarm flag me to accept or reject a cookie, but it sure is good at flagging intruding programs…
I also suggest you get Spybot and AdAware set up (both are free, as is ZoneAlarm). If your PC us full of spyware, you’ll be cookied constantly. Getting rid of the spyware will cut the traffic significantly.
The blocking/filtering software you are using should be able to tell the difference, and indicate it in the warning message.
You don’t need a firewall to detect cookies, and I can’t think of a cookie that is really harmful. Your browser should have settings for cookies – allow all, warn first, allow none. If you select anything other than “allow all” you may find yourself deluged with warnings, since most commercial sites use several cookies. These are to identify you and your browsing habits, which can be both a good and bad thing. If you don’t want your demographics relayed to the world, don’t accept cookies. But storing passwords and other personal info related to specific sites can be handy and make it easy to login to favorite sites. Amazon, for example.