Categories: TechTutorials

How to delete cookies on a web browser

Generally, cookies are placed on your computer by websites you visit with your permission. Contained in files, they collect information such as your browsing preferences or your connection status to the site. So, to keep your privacy on the internet, it is strongly recommended to delete cookies on your browsers web at least twice a week. Also, given the considerable number of web browsers that exist on the market, we have made a selection of those that are used the most. From this selection, we will explain how to get to delete cookies on a web browser.

What is a cookie?

In general, cookies are small text files that allow the websites you visit to record information on your computer about your browsing.
The websites use cookies to save your connection settings, to remember the items you have selected during your e-shopping.

There are several types of cookies:

Session cookies : they only last as long as you are on a specific website. Thanks to these cookies, the website tracks and analyzes your activity (we use it too, don’t worry, you have nothing to fear!).
Authentication cookies : they remember your visit to a site and your connection parameters (usernames and passwords). They give you access or not to certain areas of the site.
Tracking cookies : a little more daring than the other 2, they literally attach to your browser. They track everything you do and record the majority of your actions, slowing down your browsing.

Why delete cookies on a web browser?

You may need or want to delete cookies from your web browser for several reasons.

To free up space on your hard drive. Although a cookie is not heavy in itself (a few KB), the fact of browsing and accumulating it easily increases these KB. Thus, when they become numerous, they slow down your browser and take up a large part of the memory. RAM of your computer.

For performance reasons, it is therefore advisable to delete cookies from time to time.

To protect your privacy online. The tracking cookies, mentioned above, most often provide your data to websites and advertisers who thus send you tailor-made advertisements. Removing cookies from your browser could also prevent you from providing your information to malicious hackers.

Delete cookies on Google Chrome

Google’s web browser, Google chrome

displays transparency in the management of the cookies it collects. It presents those collected during your navigation, provides their creation and expiration date and also their creation objective.
Despite this transparency, if you want to delete cookies from your web browser, please follow these steps below:

Open Chrome and click on the three vertical dots located at the top right of the browser to open the “Personalize and control Google Chrome” menu. ”From the list of options that appears, select“ Settings ”.
Select the option “Confidentiality and security” in the left column. In the center of the page, activate the Cookies and other site data section.
In the page that is presented, click on the option “Display all cookies and site data”.
You will then see the list of cookies saved on your hard drive.
At this step, you have two options to delete browser cookies. Either you click on the “Delete all” button to completely eliminate cookies. Either you delete some of the cookies. For partial deletion, you must scroll down the list of cookies and choose the names of the websites you have visited and for which you want to delete cookies. Then click on the trash can icon in front of the website name to delete the cookie. The information is automatically deleted.

Delete cookies on Mozilla Firefox

To delete cookies on Firefox, you can use the steps below as a guide:

Launch your Firefox browser, then click on the three horizontal lines at the top right of the window. In the drop-down menu that appears, choose the item Options if you are on Windows or the section Settings if you are on a mac OS.
In the new tab that appears, click on the topic titled Privacy and security located on the left. Go a little further down the page until the game Cookies and site data. Here you have the possibility to obtain more information about the space occupied by these cookies on your hard drive. Also to delete all cookies on your browser, you can simply click on Erase data. In case you want to delete some cookies, you just have to click on Manage data.
If you have chosen to delete cookies selectively, then in the window that appears, select the sites from which you want to delete cookies by clicking on them. You can choose several by pressing the key. Uppercase on the keyboard in case the cookies follow one another in the list. If the cookies you want to delete are not consecutive, then you can hold down the key. Ctrl (on Windows) or Cmd (on Mac) from the keyboard and then click on the cookies to delete. Confirm your choice by pressing the button Delete selected sites.

Delete cookies on Edge

Microsoft’s web browser, Microsoft Edge offers the least flexibility in managing cookies compared to other web browsers. It does not offer partial deletion of cookies for the moment.

Open your Edge browser, then click the three ellipses at the top right of the browser window. In the menu that appears, select the option Settings.
In the left menu, select the option Confidentiality, research and services. Scroll through the page that is presented until you reach the section Clear browsing data.
Then click on the button Choose the items to erase, you will see a small dialog box appear on the screen. In this dialog box, deselect what you don’t want to delete: Browsing history, Download history, Cached images and files, etc. However, leave the Cookies boxes and other site data checked.
To refine the deletion of cookies, you can choose the relevant period from the Time interval drop-down list: Last hour, In the last 24 hours, The last 7 days, etc. Once all these steps have been taken, validate your choices by clicking on the button Clear now.

Delete Safari cookies

With Apple’s web browser, Safari, deleting cookies is generally very easy to perform.

Launch Safari and then pull down the menu Safari and choose the option Preferences.
In the panel that opens, click the button Confidentiality and activate the button Manage website data.
In the window that appears, you can delete all cookies at once by clicking on Delete all.
Otherwise, if you want to partially delete cookies, you must select from the list the sites from which you want to delete cookies by clicking on them. You can follow the recommendations provided in the previous sections to make a selection of related or remote sites in the list of cookies. As soon as the selection is made, you can validate your choice by clicking the button Remove.

Delete cookies on Opera

Open your Opera browser then click on the option Settings in the toolbar. Select Advanced and then click on Privacy and Security then click on Site settings.
In category Permissions, choose Cookies and site data, then click on Show all cookies and site data.
You access a page on which the cookies stored in your browser are displayed. Thus, to delete cookies from a well-defined website, click on the recycle bin on the far right of the site in question.
Thanks to the search box on the page, you can directly search for cookies by entering the name of a website. For delete all cookies in the browser Opera, click on the ” Delete all “.

Ultimately, according to the regulations in force, the sites have the possibility of making requests to you to save cookies on your computer. In addition, they must also give you the possibility of refusing their cookies. Also be careful when it comes to granting them permission, have a minimum of patience to read the details of the content of the cookies offered.