How do I view or delete individual cookies in Windows 7 or Windows Vista?

Question

I'd like to be able to view and delete individual cookies in Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista or Windows 7. I've looked in all the Internet Options dialogs that I can find, and also done a search for "cookie" in my C:\Users\\(me)\AppData folder - what am I missing?

Answer 1

The easiest way for Internet Explorer is to click

Tools > Internet Options > Settings (Under the Browsing History section on the General tab)

Then on the popup which should be titled "Temporary Internet Files and History Settings, click on "View Files".

Enjoy looking through many many thousands (depending on browsing history) of files and you should be able to delete a single cookie.

Cookies are typically identified by the filename cookie:@Website

For example, here I would be

cookie:william@superuser

you are best using the search in the top right corner to find the cookie for the domain you want.

The folder that this is in is

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files

(This is one of those weird protected Windows Folders! Everything is brought to you in Explorer easily, but if you view from command prompt, it is very different... I presume that the reason there is no TLD on the domain is just for simplicity as the cookies seem to have actual different file names)

This is the quickest method to delete single cookies that you may not want, however it should be noted that there are a few security tools (names elude me), that actually allow you to prevent certain sites from storing cookies.

Answer 2

If you enter javascript:alert(document.cookie) in the browser address bar an alert box will tell you the cookies of the current page/site you are on. You can make this a bookmarklet if you use this frequently.