Cookies are the small pieces of text stored on a computer by a web browser. A cookie consists of information such as user preferences, shopping cart contents, the identifier for a server-based session, or other data used by websites.

As far as cookies contain personal information it is important to protect it from unwanted sharing. All web browsers has cookie management tools. It is usually referred to privacy settings.

This article describes how to Block or Allow Cookies for certain web sites.

In order to Block or Allow cookies for certain site in standard Windows browser Internet Explorer do the following.

1. Go to Start and open Control Panel.

2. Choose Internet Options applet and open it. In Internet Options go to Privacy tab and click on Sites button:

 3. In the opened window you can add or remove sites to the list with Allow or Block setting:

 4. After adding necessary sites click OK twice.

Note: these settings will override all other privacy settings for these sites. Allow Cookies for the sites that is known and trusted.

After opening Internet Explorer, navigating to the home page, user accidentally clicks on a banner and in few seconds several new pages are opened. They give a lot of unuseful and unwanted advertisements, and it takes some time to close all of them. This kind of the messages is called pop-ups, as they appear when you don't expect. Very often there is not ability even to close it, you need to click on i, and then it disappears. It can be very annoying and irritable. Internet Explorer 8, as the previous version of IE, include built-in option to block pop-ups windows from appearing.

 To turn On Pop-up Blocker in Internet Explorer:

1. Go to [Start] > [Run], in the opened window type the command:"inetcpl.cpl", - press Enter.

Or in IE go to [Tools] menu, choose [Internet Options].

Or go to [Control Panel] > [Internet Options].  

 2. Window with the IE settings will appear. On this page press [Settings] button in the "Tabs" section:

3. The "Tabbed Browsing Settings" window appears. Select the action which will be done if a pop-up window is encountered. Press OK when the settings are set.

4. In the main window go to [Privacy] tab, on [Privacy] tab check the "Turn Pop-up Blocker" option in the {Pop-up Blocker} section of the window:

5. [Settings] button in the {Pop-up Blocker} section allows to configure the Exceptions list, Notifications and Filter Level (High, Medium, Low):  

NOTE: Pop-up Blocker can be disabled to allow all pop-ups.