CSE 3 Fluency in Information Technology, UCSD, Winter 2004

Laboratory 3: To be done in your lab section in the week of January 19

In this lab you will complete the home page you started in the previous lab and you will do the following exploration of cookies.

Suggested reading: Snyder book, Chapter 16.

Required supplies: You must bring two “IBM formatted” diskettes containing your work from the previous lab.

Exploring Cookies

In Internet Explorer, choose “Internet Options” on the “Tools” menu.

Click the “Privacy” tab.

Move the slide bar up and down to see what kind of cookie protection you get at different settings. Click the “Default” button to see what the default setting is.

While still in the Privacy section, click the Edit button and read the instructions. Choose one web site and block all cookies from that website. This is presumable a website you do not trust.

Choose another web site and set the browser to accept all cookies from this web site. This is presumably a trusted website. Note that the policy for these two web sites will now be independent of the general policy you set.

When you are done, remove both of these web sites from the list of sites with special permissions for cookies.

Explore the Help information on cookies; Locate the help index in Internet Explorer.Read all the subtopics under cookies. (Read the full text not just the topic. This is still not a lot of reading.) Try out the stuff it says under “deleting cookies” Be sure you discover the way you can delete all cookies.

Click the “Advance” button in the “Privacy” section.

What does “Always allow session cookies” mean?

If you cannot figure it out, check with your proctor.

Surf the web for a while with each of the following settings

(all under “Privacy” “Advanced”):

Prompt for both First Party Cookies and Third Party Cookies, do NOT check always allow session cookies

Accept First Party Cookies and Prompt for Third Party Cookies, do NOT check always allow session cookies

Block both First Party Cookies and Third Party Cookies but, check always allow session cookies

Block both First Party Cookies and Third Party Cookies and do NOT check always allow session cookies

If you have time an patience, you can try other settings.

Repeat this exploration of cookies with Netscape Navigator.

Write a summary of your findings in a Microsoft Word document and turn it in to your lab proctor.

Describe the effects of each of the cookies setting you tried; specifically, did they effect what sites you could visit or did they produce a lot of windows asking you questions? Describe the differences you found, if any, in how Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator handle cookies.