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Lynx Cookie Use at UNH.

Computing & Information Services Department.
author: jim.cerny@unh.edu

updated 26-JAN-1999

Starting with version 2.8.1, Lynx supports persistent cookies. Persistent means that the cookie information is retained from session to session. You can always confirm the current version of Lynx on either the CISUNIX or VAXcluster systems by: 

   lynx -version

The default at UNH for installation of Lynx 2.8.1 is for cookies to be enabled ("accept all"). You can change this when running Lynx by selecting Options ("O") and navigating on the Options Menu (which requires reading the online instructions and some care) to choose the alternatives of either "ask user" or "ignore". Any cookies that are written are put in the file ".lynx_cookies" in your home directory. This is a plain text file and you can look at it. Others may also be able to look at it if your directory protections are not the defaults -- this is not necessarily bad, but something to think about if you've done anything that would alter your default directory protections. Relevant Unix shell commands include: 

   ls -al .lynx_cookies    #show protection on file
   umask         #show default mask for file protection
   umask 077     #set default mask for new files to owner:rw only
If you want more technical details on how Lynx manages cookie exchanges with servers, see the me want cookie section of the Lynx Users Guide.

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