Why Cookies in Windws/INETcookies

I just did a full scan with Bitdefender Total Security 2016 and it found and deleted a doubleclick cookie in Users/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INETcookies. I only use Firefox and manually delete individual cookies from it's cookies.sqlite cache.

I checked the INETcookies folder and there were 32 cookies in it most with fairly recent dates so how if I never use Edge or Internet Explorer could there be recent cookies in that folder ?

One was from Linkedin and I don't remember going anywhere near there on this computer. I've deleted all the cookies in that folder and will check regularly to see if there are any new ones..............

I figured out how Cookies keep getting stored. Microsoft Office will open Edge even though Firefox is the default browser. Even opening Edge for 30 seconds will store a dozen Cookies including DoubleClick and here's the troubling part.......Edge is set to Block All Cookies.

I'm not sure if cookie blocking does what you think it does. It may still store cookies, but block the request of those cookies back to the server that sent them. That would be a perfectly legitimate interpretation, although maybe not what you would expect.

Why would It do that? Imagine you've been using your browser for a bit, and there's a bunch of cookies stored. You turn on cookie blocking, and if it just blocked the storing of the cookies, the existing cookies would still be there and still be sent to the requesting server. Blocking them outgoing would prevent that.

You might argue it should do both, and maybe so.. but it only really needs to do one. A cookie is useless by itself and harmless.

Are you just speculating or do you know for sure this is how Edge works ? Blocking should at the very least block the storage of new cookies. As for Cookies being "harmless" I guess that's why security suites like Bitdefender and Webroot delete certain cookies after a scan for malware............

Ok so my Office trial has expired so I stopped using it several days ago. I just checked and there were a dozen cookies stored in INETCookies from yesterday all from the same time. I only use Firefox, I did not open Edge or Internet Explorer so why do these cookies keep reappearing after I delete them ? Is Microsoft forcing them onto our systems ?

You may not be using Edge or Internet Explorer but there are Windows components and third party applications that use the browser or some of it's components. It is much simpler to do this than try to work with one of a dozen or more browsers that the user might choose to use. And as Mystere pointed out, blocking cookies does not necessarily do what it might seem.

Mystere said:

I'm not sure if cookie blocking does what you think it does. It may still store cookies, but block the request of those cookies back to the server that sent them. That would be a perfectly legitimate interpretation, although maybe not what you would expect.

Why would It do that? Imagine you've been using your browser for a bit, and there's a bunch of cookies stored. You turn on cookie blocking, and if it just blocked the storing of the cookies, the existing cookies would still be there and still be sent to the requesting server. Blocking them outgoing would prevent that.

You might argue it should do both, and maybe so.. but it only really needs to do one. A cookie is useless by itself and harmless.

LMiller7 said:

You may not be using Edge or Internet Explorer but there are Windows components and third party applications that use the browser or some of it's components. It is much simpler to do this than try to work with one of a dozen or more browsers that the user might choose to use. And as Mystere pointed out, blocking cookies does not necessarily do what it might seem.

+1 +1

hTconeM9user said:

Is not Office 365 free
The cookies you are getting are probably coming from that.
I just ignore them and let Ccleaner remove them every so often
The one you pay for is Office 2016/2013/2007

No it was an Office 2013 Pro trial version. This issue also happens on two other systems that have never had Office installed nor have never used 365. It happened on another system this morning after deleting all the cookies from INetcookies yesterday. All six cookies that showed up again had the same time stamp. I duplicated the same steps on another computer and also this one I'm on now and the cookies have not yet reappeared. I simply can't duplicate the trigger event that causes the new set of cookies which always include doubleclick. At this point it's more a matter of curiosity as to what is replacing those cookies. On two other systems I've set Internet Explorer to Block All Cookies and on one of them I set Edge to Block. We'll see if either one of them get contaminated again. On this system I have not set either to Block so we'll see if they come back here. All are running Win 10 Pro 64 bit.