I note that when I visit any website there will be a multitude of caches on my drive that are not at all related to the site. For example, a visit to techgenix.com resulted in more than 20 caches, all of which ended in .com, .net, .ca, et cetera. They included caches with names such as Facebook, Google, Amazon.

These caches are cleared by Cookie when I close Safari but I wonder what they might be doing in the meantime. Do they have the ability to continue tracking internet activities and sending that information to an unauthorized recipient?

I am wondering if I should have Cookie clear all non-favourite websites cookies and caches more often than just when I close Safari.

For what it’s worth, the caches installed after the visit to TechGen included:

198.58.102.214
2mdn.net
adroll.com
adzerk.net
ajax.googleapis.com
amazon-adsystem.com
amproject.org
bestbuy.ca
cloudfare.com
criteo.com
doubleclick.net
ezoic.net
facebook.com
facebook.net
fonts.googleapis.com
google-analytics.com
google.com
googlesyndication.com
googletagmanager.com
googletagservices.com
gravatar.com
gstatic.com
isoftmarketing.com
onesignal.com
opmnstr.com
os.tc
petametrics.com
sndcdn.com
soundcloud.com
typekit.net
zkcdn.net

Those caches contain data that has been stored from those various sources because they were accessed from the site you were on or by advertising banners, sidebars, etc. on that site. The idea being to make the page load faster if you reload or go back to it. Some of them are probably from tracking cookies as well. Deleting those caches while you were on the page can make your experience much slower and can make some sites very nearly Impossible to use.

When to delete cookies and caches is a matter of personal tolerance. I rely on WIPR to block the outgoing information and then let Cookie get rid of the detritus at the end of the session. Others around here take a far more stringent approach and I am sure they will speak for themselves.

Cookie only purports to be able to clear cache and history while Safari is open; it cannot actually do so. It can clear them only at quitting time. Both, however, can be cleared from within Safari at any time.

I've been on Russell's case for, literally, years to get him to remove the "functionality," but he seems to have a mental block when it comes to deleting code that he's written into the app, and, as a matter of fact, I've just about reached the point at which I"m ready to blow my excellent 10 year working relationship with him by posting that and another matter on MacUpdate.

On the other hand, I have Cookie set to clear non-favorite and tracking cookies every few minutes, and I've never noticed any meaningful slowdowns, although that could be a function of my limited browsing/surfing and the sites I visit; the only downside that's ever whacked me across the face is having "mysteriously" lost a few shopping carts, but that happens only occasionally, not regularly.