Question New laptop - - - I have cookies from many webpages I never visited, I have visited only a few websites ?

[Stefan 208]

Hi, guys.

I have a new laptop, came with W11 installed. I've used it so far just for a few hours on Chrome browsing only, and I've only visited a few webpages such as Yahoo, Gmail... Very well known ones. Yet, now that I wanted to delete cookies from a website where I want to create a second account (dunno, I thought it'd be better to delete the cookies) I noticed I have cookies from a bunch of websites I never heard of... Weird names...

yandex.ru
w55c.net
vr-tb.com
t13.io

... etc. There are tens of them. Could anyone help me understand how this works?, because I am worried. I am trying to stay away from viruses etc. and it seems no matter what I do they're always there. I mean, how can my browser be full of cookies from pages I never visited? It's as if there's something running in the background. But... on a new laptop that was hardly ever used?

Thanks.

 

[Secret-Squirrel]

I noticed I have cookies from a bunch of websites I never heard of... Weird names...
yandex.ru
w55c.net
vr-tb.com
t13.io... etc. There are tens of them. Could anyone help me understand how this works?,

They're "third-party cookies" and are not placed by the domain you're visiting but rather external providers for the purpose of advertising and analytics etc.

There's nothing abnormal going on, but you can set your browser to reject third-party cookies if you like. It's unlikely that you'll run into browsing problems by doing that.