Hello!

I am quit new to Linux and wonder if spy&adware is an issue on linux systems. I have a windows system at my home office that is heavy attaced by spy&adware.

Nope. I have yet to have any problems at all with spyware or adware. They are all made strictly for windows machines.

No worries!

I'm not worried about the pop-ups or the software they install, but more of the privacy issue of them putting cookies. I know my computer has spyware cookies - everyone does which is quite annoying! I wish they would make an Adaware or Spy-bot for Linux so we can get rid of these nasty cookies. And yes, I do understand that we can control cookies, but as you all know, some sites do not work unless you enable cookies. This can get quite annoying when visiting a website for the first time and just doing general internet surfing. You would have to constantly enable/disable and add/remove website permissions.

Managing cookies is easy - just set your browser settings to ask you before accepting a cookie, and to only accept cookies from the originating website. That way, the first time you go to a given website, you will be asked if you want to accept a cookie from [wherever] and as long as it was from the site you were visiting, you'd answer Yes. Answer No to cookies from outside sites, and in both cases, tell the browser to remember your choices. Any subsequent visits to that site will not cause any more questions about cookies. As a result, you will only be asked about cookies the very first time you visit a particular website (or if you were to clear all your cookies) -- J.W.

Wh...

Why do you have a problem with people using cookies in that way? In more than one occasion Amazon's cookies have shown me products that were PERFECTLY selected based on the pages that I had viewed in the past...

Of course you could just use a proxy, keeps your privacy and if you find a decent one (there are plenty of free anonymous proxy lists, just search google) it can be just as fast as not using one, and in some cases when they use caching, even faster.