Stop giving away personal information while browsing the Web with Netscape Navigator.

By Allen Gagle

If you are like me - you don't wish to have your personal information being bartered by Internet information brokers. Here is how you stop it.

First of all here are a few warnings:

• Dejanews and some pay sites - require the writing of cookies.
• Backup your COOKIES.TXT file before doing ANYTHING to it

Here are the steps you need to do to help you surf more anonymously:

1. Edit all information out of your COOKIE file (cookies.txt)- this can be accomplished in a number of ways - Windows Wordpad, notepad or plain old DOS EDIT.
2. After you locate private information - simply delete those lines, disregard the warning in the header file - it is of no concern.
3. Once you have edited all private information out - leave all other information which may be required by some sites, such as strings of data or other technobabble.
4. Save your cookie file.

Here is the hard part for those of you not knowing MSDOS:

1. Drop to a DOS prompt and enter the Netscape directory, usually:
   C:cd\progra~1\netscape\navigator\program
2. Now, locate the cookie file by getting a directory:
   dir/w/p *.txt
3. When you see the file type:
   attrib +r cookie.txt (or cookies.txt)
4. You have just Read protected the cookie file, so no new information can be placed into your - now clean - cookie file.

Hope this helps in the struggle for privacy.