Should I ever remove cookies from my computer???

If you are using any sort of online banking you will need those cookies in order to continue logging in. There are many sites that use cookies in a legitimate manner.

You can configure your browser to not allow things like third party cookies or refer cookies if you are into privacy. The best advice I can give would be to ensure you are NOT saving passwords and other confidential information in your browser... and that you have proper security installed and kept up to date from a reliable vendor.

Good Luck

It doesn't change your performances at all.

Cookies are basicly a set of preference a website put on your browser. For example when you connect to your favorite forum after logging in the forum will save an id number as a "cookie". Then each time you press a link on the website beside the "get /webpagename.php" request your browser will append the websites cookies after the request so the website know who it is talking to.

Edit : Here is an example on a wikipedia page that will be a little more talkative to you.

Just after I sent my password on the login page, wikipedia send me back this "answer" in http.

http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/7883/cookie1el7.g...

As you can see wikipedia did "set some cookie" on my pc.

After that, when I accessed a random page (in that case a stylesheet) my browser appended the following cookies (the session cookie got set before))

http://img352.imageshack.us/img352/1943/cookie2he2...

right now if you appended those cookie on your browser it would access my account, but because I'm going to log off.... right now you can't access it as my session cookie has now been deleted from the server ^__^ ).

Yes and you should also delete the Temporary Internet Files also on a regular basis. Note that TURNING OFFcookies may not allow you to access some websites.

Every time you load a webpage your browser will save it to your hard drive, meaning it is quicker to load on your next visit.

But this collection of pictures and text can become very large. There is a simple way to free up disc space. Click on TOOLs - select ITERNET OPTIONS from the drop down menu. In the center of the the window displayed and labeled INTERNET TEMPORARY FILES, click on DELETE FILES. This will open up disc space and takes less than 30 seconds to do. Doing this at least every two weeks is recommended.

Deleting cookies will slow down your web activities. They are really only shortcuts, similar in a way to Favourites. The main reason I leave mine alone, is that they fill in those akward boxes every time you log on to a site where you have to remember passwords etc.