{"id":36242,"date":"2026-07-08T15:58:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T22:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=36242"},"modified":"2026-07-08T16:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T23:14:07","slug":"cookie-online-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/cookie-online-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cookie App: A Convenient Solution to Online Privacy \u2014 by Steve Davidson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Background \u2014 origins of \u201cThe Problem to be Solved\u201d<\/h2>\n

When our forefathers invented the World Wide Web, their vision was that it would be stateless \u2014 that is, static pages would be available for viewing through your Web browser. It was a unidirectional thing \u2014 information was provided, period. Coming back to a page would result in a predictable and reproducible outcome, no matter what. There was no memory of the visitor. There was no keeping track of information, and everyone would see the same thing.<\/p>\n

But as use of the Web evolved, it became clear that there were advantages to Web pages being able to keep track of some things, such as a visitor\u2019s preference for Fahrenheit over Celsius. In those quaint old days, the Internet was completely non-commercial \u2014 it was the province of researchers (in fact, it was called \u201cThe Research Internet\u201d). But once E-commerce started, it was necessary to retain information about the consumer, such as authentication state (confirming that the user was who they claimed to be by providing a valid password \u2014 and retaining that knowledge).<\/p>\n

State needed to be added, so early browsers let websites leave behind little bits of data. These were originally called \u201cmagic cookies\u201d \u2014 now simply known as \u201ccookies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like any tool, a cookie can be used for good, or for or for not-so-good purposes. Among the not-so-good purposes for cookies is tracking people all over the Internet, leading to what is now known as the Surveillance Economy.<\/p>\n

Cookies can diminish your privacy by enabling websites to build up behavior profiles, engage in highly targeted advertising, and sell collected information about you to data brokers. In addition, websites can \u2014 and usually do \u2014 store additional bundles of information, such as caches to speed up revisiting. So, just in the ordinary course of using the Internet, your Web browser can accumulate a ++lot++<\/strong> of extraneous stuff that you didn\u2019t ask for, didn\u2019t authorize, and probably don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n

I, for one, would prefer not to be tracked. The simplest way of doing that is to either turn cookies off entirely, but that is highly impractical because a lot of the Web would not work properly. Another way is to manually clear out all of the accumulated cookies and other debris with some frequency.<\/p>\n

This brute force approach has a downside. There are quite a few cookies I really don\u2019t want to delete. For example, if 1Password doesn\u2019t detect its cookies in Safari, it will refuse to work until you go through a laborious process of re-authenticating. Less laborious, but also a pain in the butt, is to have to sign back into online publications (e.g., the NY Times and Washington Post) every time you want to read an article. And cookies is how some websites know you have already provided your second factor on that device, saving you from re-entering that six-digit code.<\/p>\n

This leads me to the problem to be solved (\u201ctrademark Podfeet Productions\u201d): How to selectively keep ++some++<\/strong> cookies and delete all the others.<\/p>\n

I used to do it in Safari by going to its settings, clicking on the Privacy tab, then clicking on the \u201cManage Website Data\u201d button, hitting Command-A (for \u201cselect all\u201d) and, while holding down the Command key, manually deselecting the sites whose cookies I want to keep, and then finally hitting the \u201cRemove\u201d button. That left only the cookies I wanted to retain.<\/p>\n

What a time-consuming pain in the butt!<\/p>\n

Problem Solved<\/h2>\n

This sounds like a job for software. And I found something that does the job nicely in the Mac App Store. It\u2019s (cleverly) called \u201cCookie,\u201d and it is exactly what I was looking for. A cautionary note here: Searching for just \u201cCookie\u201d in the Mac App Store will lead to a lot of applications that aren\u2019t what I am describing here. It is listed as \u201cCookie – Privacy Control\u201d, and its icon looks like an old-style radar screen, in green, with a silhouette of someone\u2019s head. Check out the show notes for a screenshot.<\/p>\n

\"Cookie
Cookie in the Mac App Store<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I primarily use Cookie on Safari, but it also works with Firefox, Opera, Edge, and Chrome, and is supposed to work with others (but I\u2019ve only tested it with those five).<\/p>\n

Diving into the Application<\/h2>\n

The user interface is fairly straightforward. On the left or sidebar, you can enable Cookie for the Web browsers you want it to work with. It will prompt you for permission access, exactly in accordance with Apple\u2019s software privacy guidelines.<\/p>\n

\"Sidebar
Sidebar Showing Enabled and Disabled Browsers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The majority of the window is for cookie management. There are four tabs.<\/p>\n

The first one, the \u201cWebsites\u201d tab, presents all the site cookies you currently have in a checklist format. Tick the checkbox next to the sites for which you want to allow to stay. Using a disclosure triangle, you can expand any website to see what they stored there, which gives you an extra measure of granularity. For example, I might want a site to leave a cookie, but not store SQLite data.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By doing this, you have essentially created an \u201callow list\u201d of trusted websites that have the right to store cookies and other data on your computer. The Cookie app calls these your \u201cfavorites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once you have selected the sites you want to allow to leave behind data, you can proceed to the \u201cUnwanted Data\u201d tab, where there are \u201cRemove Now\u201d buttons to immediately remove tracking cookies, non-favorites, cache content, history, downloads, favicon (which are those little website thumbnails), website preferences, form values, and other search engines. In addition to buttons to remove these sites right now, there are checkboxes next to the different categories so you can select which ones are to be automatically removed based on the conditions you set in the next tab in the user interface. This is the magic of the Cookie app.<\/p>\n

\"Websites
The Unwanted Tab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My recommendation is to leave the favicon, history, and downloads boxes unchecked since they are inoffensive and are not really a privacy risk. I think it\u2019s great that this software gives you that level of control.<\/p>\n

The next tab shows you automatic removal options. Your choices are On Cookie Quit<\/em>, On Browser Quit<\/em>, Every [so many] Minutes while the Browser is Open *(and you get to pick the number of minutes), *When the computer wakes from sleep<\/em> and At Login<\/em>. The ones I use are browser quit, after a period of time \u2014 I use 720 minutes, meaning it will happen roughly twice a week, and at login. Choice is good.<\/p>\n

\"Removal
Removal Options<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the top of the window is a play\/pause button pair that you use to turn the automatic Removal Options processes on (or off).<\/p>\n

\"Play
Play\/Pause to Start\/Stop the Service<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And the final tab, Timer Options, addresses the things you might want cleared when the timer goes off, which I have set to match what I have selected in the Unwanted Data \u2014 for the same reason. I don\u2019t know why you would want to have timer operations do different things, but, as I\u2019ve said, \u201cChoice is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Timer
Timer Options Tab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you are like me and use different profiles in Safari, you can be even more surgical and handle cookies for each profile, such as having some cookies be favorites in one profile and not others.<\/p>\n

One of the things I like about Cookie is that it also explicitly identifies tracking cookies, which are denoted in red text in the user interface.<\/p>\n

\"Example
Tracking Cookies Example from Stack Overflow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I found this helpful understanding, for example, Microsoft\u2019s cookies because Microsoft uses both good functional cookies and a lot of evil tracking cookies. There is an option in the Advanced Settings to \u201cAlso remove Tracking Cookie (favorites) and that enables the Cookie app to remove Microsoft\u2019s evil tracking cookies, but leaves the rest of my Microsoft cookies alone.<\/p>\n

Finally, there are four small icons in the upper-right corner that give you quick access to certain tools and controls.<\/p>\n

\"Four
Four Buttons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They are, from left to right: Information (which tells you about the selected control or screen), a toggle that switches you from normal advanced mode to a a highly-simplified mode that I find useless, a button that gives you statistics about what it has removed for you (as of this recording it has removed some twelve thousand items, about 60% of which are cached data, and about 10% tracking cookies).<\/p>\n

\"Privacy
Cleanup Stats<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And the last item is a gear icon that takes you to its settings.<\/p>\n

Cookie can be run hidden, accessible only from the Menu Bar, with the Dock icon suppressed, summoned by a hot key, or as a regular app. I prefer the latter at this point because I like the option of adding or removing favorites \u2014 yes, I\u2019m a perpetual tinkerer. I appreciate the variety of options.<\/p>\n

The Cost<\/h2>\n

Cookies gives you a two-week trial period, after which it charges according to your selected subscription period, such as $20 (USD) for an annual subscription, $13 (USD) for a semi-annual subscription, and $4 (USD) if you prefer to pay month-to-month.<\/p>\n

Given how much time I used to spend painstakingly curating my cookies, $20 a year is well worth it for me. I think you\u2019ll find it worth it too.<\/p>\n

There is detailed documentation online at https:\/\/sweetpproductions.com\/products\/cookie8\/help\/index.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

Steve, out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Background \u2014 origins of \u201cThe Problem to be Solved\u201d When our forefathers invented the World Wide Web, their vision was that it would be stateless \u2014 that is, static pages would be available for viewing through your Web browser. It was a unidirectional thing \u2014 information was provided, period. Coming back to a page would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[147],"tags":[1891,4825,8338],"class_list":["post-36242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-cookies","tag-evil","tag-tracking-cookies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Websites-Unwanted-Data-Removal-Options-Timer-Options-1040x520-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36242"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36264,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36242\/revisions\/36264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}