Q -

The updates shouldn't have affected any existing cookies that were on your machine, but if you don't give permission the updated IE may block new cookies from the same sites where they might have been accepted before update.

You have two choices. You can go to a lower "Privacy setting," which you might want to do under some conditions. There may even be instances where you want to temporarily "open up" your system for some particular browsing task. Be aware that if you get a cookie when your barriers are low, that site will probably be able to "refresh" it, if it's still there when you return after resetting to more restrictive limits.

The other choice, my usual, is to keep the "tightened" restrictions and just list the permission individually for the specific site(s) whose cookies you want to accept.

You might not even have noticed the change, if you already had cookies from all of the places you visit regularly. It's only if you've lost one, and want to replace it, that you might find that a site can't give it to you (without your permission) under the new definitions - when it doesn't look like you've changed your settings.

Another change that may be of interest, is that the new "normal" settings should display a little icon in the lower right of the tool bar when you connect to a site without a posted "privacy statement" that conforms to a particular standard. You can click on the icon to see what's wrong with their certificate (or lack of one). This icon often didn't appear at the Privacy settings people used before recent updates, but should come up for you now. If you learn to watch for it, you get at least a little warning not to click things without known purpose on sites where you see it.

Actually, my web browsing is so boring I had to go look for a site without a valid certificate just to see what the d... thing looks like. You will find it popping up quite often when you Google on "public interest" topics.

It's a little like the little padlock that tells you that you're on a "secure site" - which you should learn to verify by checking that the address bar also is at an https: address (not just http:). I'm told that either can be "faked," although it's difficult and rare; but it's extremely rare to find them both lying on the same site.

John