When you log in on mudcat, you get a cookie, which is a plain text file that is stored on your computer. Mudcat tells your computer to "write this down and remember it."

The next time you go back to mudcat, it asks "has this person got my cookie," by looking where it expects it to be. If the cookie is found, then you can be "logged on" automatically.

If you "log off" when you leave mudcat, the cookie should be removed, or modified to show that you logged off; and you will have to manually "log on" the next time you return. If you just "go away," the cookie should show you as being logged on the next time you return. (One of the reasons you should always "exit" a secure site using the site's own exit/logoff button so that any cookie that shows you as being there legally can be "turned off." Cookies can be stolen.)

The standard location for cookies is at C:\Windows\Cookies, (or C:\WINNT\Cookies for NT based op systems like WinNT or Win2K). If you use IE and an ISP that uses generic protocols, that's where they should be; but some services feel it's necessary that they "do their own thing," so it's possible that if you use AOL or Yahoo or some other such, your ISP-program may put them somewhere else. If you frequently swap back and forth between sevices, I won't make any guesses about where you might find cookies on your machine; but they are all on your machine and if your cookie crumbles, it's because of something done on your own machine - or perhaps because the ISP-program you're using at the moment doesn't know where the previous ISP-program put it(?). Cookies are plain text files that you can look at in Notepad, Wordpad, or Word, but consist mostly of a few numerical sequences.

If you "add to favorites" in IE, a file is added at C:\Windows\Favorites. The directory tree, if you look at the "Favorites" folder in Win Explorer, replicates what you see if you look at Favorites in IE. An individual "Favorite" file contains a "display name," which you can edit in IE, the URL of the page you "bookmarked," usually the URL of the "homepage" where the individual "bookmark" lives, and a "LAST MODIFIED= ..." entry that is another of those "random number sequences." The LastMod entry is somewhat "cookie-like," but I don't know if it has sufficient info to "log you on," or if it just tells the site when you were there last - and maybe how many times you've visited.

When you visit a page, the page itself is normally downloaded to your machine - and when you scroll back and forth around that page, you are actually reading a temp file on your own machine. If you change to another page that you have visited recently, IE will look to see if the page on the web has changed, and if it has not, it may load the temporary file that is already on your machine. These temporary files are normally stored at "C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files" and sometimes at C:\Temp. Normally, all your "cookies" from the C:\Windows\Cookies folder are replicated in ...Temp Int Files, and new "sub directories" may be created each time you open your browser.

In Windows, but offline, if you run Disk Cleanup it may offer to delete temporary internet files. Performance here is rather erratic, and it frequently leaves most of them. In IE, Tools, Internet Options, you can select "clear history," and most current history files will be cleared - although there will still be a lot of trash left behind. If you clear history, your machine will no longer remember which threads you have visited. Neither of these two cleanup methods will ordinarily delete a cookie, although they may "lose" one if the site uses a history file to find it.

If you swap ports on mudcat - say from Shorty to Ragtime, the thread i.d.s that your machine sees are different, so that threads you visited while connected to Shorty will show as not visited on Ragtime. The thread i.d. includes the root folder name, so the thread on Shorty and the same thread on Ragtime will look like two separate pages to your machine. If someone posted a link using the "full URL" format, you may not realize that it took you to one of the other mudcat ports. If you then click on the "Discussion" icon to go back to the main thread, you will stay on the new port - and all the "grayed out" history will be gone. (Which is another good reason for posting only the "relative address" within the 'cat.)

Micro$oft says that you can back up your cookies - meaning that you could keep a copy of the ones you want. You would then be able to "delete everything" and copy your good ones back. In typical fashion, Micro$oft does not actually say you can "restore" a cookie - so don't rely on this.

Note that none of the above is "verified" information, but is my own observation of what goes on when I mess around with my own very conventional plain-vanilla setup.

John