How to clear tracking cookies on your web browser

This tutorial shows how to remove cookies from Google Chrome on Mac OS X.

This tutorial describes how to clear "cookies" that web sites store in your browser in order to keep track of your identity across multiple encounters with you. In the short term, this results in a good user experience in which content is personalized to you and you don't have to log in to sites every time you visit them.

In the long term, however, it allows companies to build up a record of your web browsing habits and behavior. This is an asset that companies develop and monetize. In some cases it is benign or helpful to the consumer because it promises to enable more effective advertising. In other cases it takes advantage of users by treating their life as a commodity that can be bought and sold to anyone.

I like to delete all my cookies and web site data once a year on the 4th of July. That way I get some of the benefit, but the risk of harm is reduced.

Cookies are not the only way that a website can track you, but if you are concerned about privacy, clearing them is a good place to start.