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Why does my clear history clear everything anyway when I customize it to only remove certain things?

hereshopin
hereshopin
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I would like to clear just the cookies, browsing history, search history and cache when I use the clear history option so I purposefully make sure that I have left the active logins and site preferences box UNchecked. Still however, every time I clear just those top things, I am automatically signed out of all of the sites I wanted to stay logged in to. I don't understand why. Can anyone help me out?

I would like to clear just the cookies, browsing history, search history and cache when I use the clear history option so I purposefully make sure that I have left the active logins and site preferences box UNchecked. Still however, every time I clear just those top things, I am automatically signed out of all of the sites I wanted to stay logged in to. I don't understand why. Can anyone help me out?

All Replies (3)

finitarry
finitarry
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If you are clearing cookies, that can log you out of forum sites. A lot of fora use cookies to identify you, and if you clear them, you need to log in again because the fora do not recognize you without them.

If you set the browser to default to blocking cookies and allow only those that you need to keep, you will not need to remove cookies because the only ones you have will be the ones you want. You could alternately use the setting to default to session cookies and limit persistent cookies to those that you want to keep.

hereshopin
hereshopin Question owner
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I understand now, thank you. It must be the cookies because I tried blocking cookies and the forum sites that I frequent wouldn't let me log in at all without enabling them so I'm guessing that is why they are signing me out when I delete them too. Kinda sucks if you ask me. I don't know exactly what cookies are but I think they are a record of the sites you visit. I don't know why they need mine, they would probably bore them to tears, lol.

Thanks again.

the-edmeister
the-edmeister
  • Moderator
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See this for an explanation of what "cookie" is all about, as relates to the internet and PC's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie