what is a tracker / tracking cookie?

The tracking cookies can do both helpful and malicious things. It all depends on the site the cookie came from. Certain sites like porn and some work at home sites will embed javascript to automatically upload to your computer. Be sure to have both a firewall and an active scan antivirus on your computer. For the most part cookies are innocent, its a way to save your web history so the address bar can auto-fill when you start to enter an address. Now as for a "tracker" as in a tracking program, that is a problem. It can do everything from report your web history to an undisclosed source to acting as a middle man to pass on personal information. A "tracker" can come in many forms though usually a trojan or virus. Hope I didn't scare you and hope this helps grant you some understanding. I am including a link to cnet in my sources. Go there and search for Spybot. One of the results will be Spybot Search and Destroy 1.5. Download that and run it. Let it update all its information first. It will take care and delete any cookies that are suspicious and detect tracking programs along with registry changes that should not be allowed as well as immunize computer against further attacks of the same kind. Run it once a week and you should be clean! ^_^

It's a text file left by a web page you visited. Generally they are used to keep a record on your PC of who you are on the site, what your preferences on the site are and what adverts you've clicked on from the site and stuff like that.

They are *mostly* harmless except they keep a record of what you did on a website which provides targetted advertising and so on. Even the ones that are not harmless don't do very much other than alter how you on your PC sees a website.

That's mostly true! There are bound to be exceptions... but they're not runnable self-replicating code, they're just a record of your details and so on.

a tracking cookie is a piece of information that is installed in your hard drive from a website/or some web sites you had opened so they can trace you in the next movement you will do on your computer. some could lead you into trouble and tendency that your information will be leaked as you are being tracked. you need to delete that tracking cookie for security purposes and to protect your privacy/information.

It won't do any harm as such, but it will allow whatever site that placed the cookie to identify you each time you visit,. This allows them to build up statistics about you that they may use in ways you don't want.

That said if it is from a site you want to use, then deleting it will probably lose you functionality from the site (eg. when it remembers your username and password).

personally wouldnt worry about it,many av scanners pick up cookies from some websites as malicious when they are totally harmless.you can if you want set your web browser to a higher level so it doesnt accept cookies but this will limit your browsing ability.the following link will clarify it for you and save me a heck of a lot of typing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

Tracking cookies can follow which web sites you go on to. They can then be used to target you with ads related to those site subjects. It is always best to remove them.

Cookies are merely small .txt (textual content cloth) documents that via themselves can not injury your laptop. Cookies are "set" via merely approximately each and every internet-internet site which you pass to, on each and every pass to. you are able to delete all your cookies on the instant and via the next day you're starting to be dozens returned merely be traveling internet-sites. they are not a plague or secret agent ware, yet some human beings evaluate "monitoring" cookies to be an invasion of privateness. those monitoring cookies are "third occasion cookies" from merchandising servers. they are able to music your strikes around the internet with the intention to grant to you custom, focused merchandising. it actual relies upon on ones very own point of paranoia, whether one considers monitoring cookies some sort of possibility. some anti-secret agent ware courses do no longer even checklist monitoring cookies as even a minor possibility. If those monitoring cookies DO hassle you and you're using internet Explorer for a browser, an basic exchange of a placing can permit you completely block all third occasion (monitoring) cookies. (lots much less complicated then continually removing them!) pass to procedures > internet concepts > privateness > progressed > verify-mark "override computerized cookie dealing with" > 0.33 occasion cookies > tick "block" > ok > ok. individually, If I take place to keep in mind it, i'm going to delete my cookies each and every 6 months or so :-) Cookies are lots ado approximately nothin'.

Its a website gizmo which stores things, and embeds in your internet pages..