"The problem is when you surf the Internet, you get inundated with cookies written to your hard drive, cache files, you have to deal with pop up ads, advertising all over the page. So the idea behind Internet Cleanup is we present a cleaner experience for the user surfing on the Internet by removing unwanted advertising, by removing unwanted pop up windows and providing you with a really good way to manage cookies that are written to your hard drive."
You don't necessarily need a third party program to take control of the cookies, which are files left behind by Web sites on your computer. There are controls built into your browser. Click on tools, Internet options and then privacy. But not all cookies are bad...
"So for example if I have an online banking cookie that I know that I need to keep because it has information that makes a banking transaction easier to complete, I want to keep that. So what Internet Cleanup allows me to do is build a list of exempted cookies. So I can make a list of cookies that I would like to protect and then I can have the program automatically delete all the rest of the cookies."
The program, which runs on Windows, is simple to use and can get rid of many of those Internet annoyances. Alladin, which is best known for its Stuff-It compression utility, sells a similar program called iClean that works on Macs as well. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.