How to Block Third Party Cookies in Internet Explorer 7

When you visit a site, you may download a number of cookies. There are two types of cookies you may get from a site – 1^st party and 3^rd party cookies. 1^st party cookies are issued directly by the site you are visiting whereas 3^rd party cookies typically come from advertisers or banner ads on that site. 1^st party cookies may be session based. If a cookie is session based, the cookie will be removed from your system after you close Internet Explorer. Depending on your level of concern, you may choose to block all 3^rd party cookies.

It may be useful to have Internet Explorer notify you whenever a cookie is about to be installed so you can see the difference between 1^st party and 3^rd party cookies. Note that you will likely receive quite a few notices even just for a single site, but again, it’s interesting to see just how much is going on behind the scenes. After you get a feel for how cookies work and the number of cookies you get on a specific site, I recommend you disable the prompt option.

1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Under the Tools Menu, select Internet Options
3. Select the Privacy tab
4. Click on the Advanced button
5. Select the checkbox to “Override automatic cookie handling”
6. For now select the radio button for Prompt under both 1^st and 3^rd party cookies
7. Click OK, then OK on the Internet Options window
8. Browse to a site such as Yahoo
9. You will receive a privacy notice regarding cookies. You can click on the “More Info” button to get a detailed report such as in the figure below

click to enlarge

In the detailed Privacy Alert window, you’ll want to take a look at the “Domain” and “3^rd Party” fields. Note that the domain for a 3^rd party cookie will not be the same domain that you browsed to. You can also see in this window whether the cookie is a Session cookie or not.

If you decide to disable all 3^rd party cookies, follow the below steps:

1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Under the Tools Menu, select Internet Options
3. Select the Privacy tab
4. Click on the Advanced button
5. Select the checkbox to “Override automatic cookie handling”
6. For now select the radio button for “Accept” under 1st party cookies and “Block” under 3rd party cookies
7. Click OK, then OK on the Internet Options window

Internet Explorer will now accept all 1st party cookies and will automatically block all 3rd party cookies. With the number of various options available in Internet Explorer, allowing 1^st party and blocking 3^rd party cookies would be my recommended configuration. Note that blocking cookies does nothing to disable or block advertisements on web site.

For more web security tips, see our articles Top Two Free Hosts File Managers, How to Control Cookies in Internet Explorer, How to Block Third Party Cookies in Internet Explorer 7, Using ZonedOut to Manage Internet Explorer Security Zones and Securing Your Web Browser's Homepage.