Are cookies considered malware?

[alegator]

I have noticed that for most malware scanners (Spyware Doctor,etc) cookies are considered low risk malware. My experience has shown that selecting cookies for removal after a scan in general creates more problems than advantages (I had an issue of Bookmarks corruption in Firefox due to this). So, am I safe leaving cookies in my PC? Does it compromise my PC's security?

[hardy]

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[freebird73717]

Cookies are small text files that are written to your hard drive when you visit many, if not most, Web sites. These files may contain information such as your user ID and password if you selected to have the Web site remember your ID and password and it may contain what links you used in the Web site and other similar information. Cookies therefore can be good. As mentioned above, if you choose to have a Web site remember your ID and password or other information, the cookie is good. If you block or delete this type of cookie, you have to enter the information each time you return to the Web site. Some cookies help the Web site designer to obtain feedback as to the visitors experiences on that site. Cookies can also aid the e-commerce sites with their check-out process. In fact, some Web pages will not be displayed if you block their cookies.

On the other hand, some cookies are from the advertisers tracking your habits. These are the ones that your antimalware programs usually flag.

You can instruct your Web browser to accept cookies, block cookies or prompt you for acceptance or rejection of the cookie. Furthermore you can select what action be taken for first and third-party cookies. A first-party cookie is one that originated from the Web site you are viewing. A third-party cookie is one that originated on or is sent by a Web site other than the one you are viewing. It is highly recommended to block all third-party cookies.

I also will suggest these two apps.

SUPERAntiSpyware is great. There is a free and paid version. Free version does manual scans only. Paid version has realtime protection and other goodies.

Malwarebytes mentioned by Ally68 is also great. Like sas free version does manual scan and paid version does realtime. I use both along with a good antivirus.

[Dv8ted2]

No cookies are not considered malware. They are text files that store session information. If you are that worried about it, delete the cookies, but you would need to log in to your sites again.

[alegator]

These files may contain information such as your user ID and password if you selected to have the Web site remember your ID and password...

If cookies store ID&password info then anyone hacking your PC can extract that info from them, not very safe to have the website remember your ID&password, better log in each time you visit the website to prevent the cookie to store login info.

[Jim44]

If cookies store ID&password info then anyone hacking your PC can extract that info from them,

I would think that if someone hacked your PC, them getting your log-in credentials for forums, etc would be the least of your worries.

In general, though, we talking about "security vs. convenience". Following freebird73717's advice seems like a good balance of those two things - I pretty much follow the same philosophy.

[DarrellS]

There are only four or five sites that I trust enough to use 1st party cookies and scripting. All other sites, I turn off all cookies and all scripting in IE6.

Everyone says that Firefox is way more secure than IE but most times when I'm browsing with Firefox, I get a pop-up warning from Avast telling me that a website has tried to put a trojan in my temporary internet files and recommends that I terminate my connection. This doesn't happen when when using IE with scripting and cookies turned off.

I guess the point here is that no browser is safe using default settings.