Enable Cookies only for Specific Web Sites

This article discusses how to enable cookies for specific sites within Internet Explorer and Mozilla firefox. I know there are other web browsers but this article only covers those two. If you need in depth information about what cookies are and how they work there are plenty of other articles on the Internet about that.

Step1

These first few steps are for Internet Explorer. These steps assume you want to allow some sites to use cookies on your computer rather than every site or no sites at all. For IE, first go to the "Tools" menu at the top of your IE screen, and pick "Internet Options".

Step2

A new window should open up. Now click on the "Privacy" tab. Click on the "advanced" button to open another window. If the next window says "accept" for "first party" and "Third party" cookies then you are allowing all web sites to place a cookie on your hard drive. If it says "block" then you are not accepting cookies for most, or all, web sites. If it says "prompt" you would most likely know it because you would constantly get a message asking if you wanted to enable a cookie for most of the web sites you visit.

Step3

If your settings said "block" then you can still allow some cookies for sites you specifically need. In general this is a good practice because it doesn't leave your computer wide open for any cookie from any website. Next click on the "sites" button from the same window where you clicked the "advanced" button. If you use an antispyware program then you may already see a bunch of web sites listed as "always block". This means those particular sites will always be blocked from putting a cookie on your computer even if you have "allow" selected on the other screen. In general this is OK unless one of those blocked sites is a site you need to use like your online banking site.

Step4

In the space on the "sites" section you can type a site like "www.ehow.com" and then click "allow" to enable cookies for Ehow even when you have the block cookies feature enabled on the previous screen. Make sure you click the "allow" button. If you type the website and then just hit enter it will mark it as blocked. Hit "OK" and you are all done for Internet Explorer. You may need to close IE and reopen it for the changes to totally take effect.

Step5

If you use Mozilla Firefox then you will need to follow the next few steps. First go to the "tools" section in Firefox and then choose "options". Click on the "privacy" tab. If the box marked "accept cookies" is checked off then your Mozilla is accepting cookies for all or most web sites. If you uncheck if then most website wont be able to install cookies on your computer. The "most", or "all" depends on whether or not you set any exceptions in the next step.

Step6

You can click the "exceptions" button to specify specific sites that will never be allowed to install cookies on your computer or always will be allowed regardless of what your overall settings are. On the "Exceptions" screen you can type a web address like "www.ehow.com" and then hit "allow" or "block" to set the parameter.