How to see my Internet Explorer cookies?

The cookies of Internet Explorer are kept in special folder, which contains an index.dat file and one text file for each stored cookie. The location of this folder depends on the version of Windows.

For Windows 7 and Windows Vista:

If you have Windows 7 or Windows Vista then the cookie folders are in these locations (on your PC they can be on other drive instead of drive C):

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\Low\

Note, that you will have to change the settings of Windows Explorer to show all kinds of files (including the protected system files) in order to access these folders. Here is how to do this:

Start Windows Explorer. You can do this by clicking the yellow Windows Explorer icon on the task bar or, alternatively, by typing the words windows explorer in the search box of the Start menu and then clicking the Windows Explorer icon when it appears in the search results. Click the Organize button in the top left corner of the window and then select Folder and search options from the drop-down menu. This will open the Folder Options window, which is shown in the right. In this window, you have to click the View tab. In the Advanced settings tree, you have to turn on the option Show hidden files, folders and drives, and to turn off the options Hide extensions for known file types and Hide protected operating system files. Finaly, click the OK button to confirm your changes and close the Folder Options dialog window. After you have done viewing the Temporary Internet Files folder, you can restore the settings of Windows Explorer to their previous state.

For Windows XP and Windows 2000:

If you have Windows XP or Windows 2000 then cookie folder is in this location (on your PC it can be on other drive instead of drive C):

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Cookies\

If you have only one user account on Windows XP or Windows 2000 then replace <username> with Administrator to get the paths.

For Windows Me, 98, 95 or Windows NT:

If you have Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows NT or Windows 95 then cookie folder is in one of these locations:

C:\Windows\Cookies\
C:\Windows\Profiles\<username>\Cookies\

Note that on your computer the Windows directory may not be C:\Windows but some other directory. If you don't have Profiles directory in you Windows directory don't worry - this just means that you are not using user profiles.

In these folders you can see all persistent cookies that are saved to your user account. The names of the cookie files are in form username@hostname. For example the cookie name administrator@altavista[2] is showing that this cookie came from www.altavista.com and the current computer user was administrator. You can also open the cookie file to see its content but it most cases it will be encoded and not human readable.

WARNING! Even if you delete all cookie files from this folder most of the information for the cookies will not be deleted because it is saved in so called index.dat file. In some cases you can see the index.dat file in the cookie folder but even if you cannot see it, it is always there. You cannot delete this file because Windows and Internet Explorer keep it open all the time. The only way to get rid of the cookies for good is to shred the content of the index.dat file with a specialized privacy protection program - Mil Shield. It cleans not only cookies but also the content of all other index.dat files (yes, there are many other index.dat files - to learn where are they read the article Where are Index.dat files located?) along with history, temporary Internet files, recently used documents history, Google, Yahoo and Bing toolbars search history and many other tracks.

Download the free trial version of Mil Shield 9.0 4.34 MB - 5 sec with broadband

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