How to Clear Your Browser's Cookies and/or History

Our website platform and your browser may sometimes use cookies to help you view pages sooner, fill in forms faster, etc. Your browser may also retain its own history of pages you've visited, even without using cookies.

If you want to clear all cookies and history from your browser, here are some instructions from companies that make the most popular browsers:

• Google: Clear Cache & Cookies in Chrome

• Apple: Clear Cookies from Safari (MacOS)

• Apple: Clear Browsing History from Safari (MacOS)

• Apple: Clear History, Cache & Cookies from Safari (phone/tablet)

• Microsoft: Manage Cookies in Microsoft Edge

• Mozilla: How to clear the Firefox cache 

• Samsung: Using the Samsung Internet App 

Nowadays, most browsers will give you options like whether to only clear today's history, or the entire history, etc.

When Can Cookies Help Me?

When one of our pages has a lot of images or interactive functionality, your cookie choices affect how you experience the content:

• Reject all cookies: Make the browser and our website system exchange aaaaall of the images, styling rules, functional logic, etc. every time you visit the same pages on this website. This means you will always wait longer to see and use the content.

• Accept "performance" cookies: Allow your browser to cache (store a local copy of) all those images and functionality, so it doesn't bother to fetch the identical data next time you visit. This means you only wait longer to see and use the content the first time you visit a page. After that, the same page loads faster next time you visit.

• Accept "marketing" cookies: FFSC doesn't actively use marketing cookies right now. However, if you allow marketing cookies, our website system (or your browser) still might use marketing cookies to guess which content might interest you.

Why Might I Need to "Clear My Cache" or history?

Some browsers will store (cache) functionality locally for a while (maybe a week or more), without paying attention to our website's cookies. And sometimes our website system won't delete outdated cookies even though a page has newer content. In these situations, the browser and website might not exchange the latest data.

To solve this, you need a way to fetch the latest version of the page from the website from scratch. The most common solutions are:

• Clear your browser's cache and/or history: You can force your browser to delete (clear) the stored info from its cache, and then you can reload the web page to start fresh. 

• Use a different brand of browser: You can use a different browser that hasn't visited the website recently, so it doesn't have the older cookie. (But when you go back to the original browser, you'll still have the same outdated cookies problem.)

• Use "incognito" or "private" mode: Most browsers have a mode which ignore data the browser has stored in the past.  (But when you go back to the browser's normal mode, you'll still have the same outdated cookies problem.)

If you think you're seeing an older version of a page, but you don't want to clear your cache or history unless you're sure it will help, you can first try using your browser's private (or incognito) mode, or try another browser. If that fixes the issue, then you can go back to your normal browser and clear its cache to solve the problem permanently.

How Do Cookies Work?

A cookie is not a piece of code. It's a very long sequence of letters and numbers, which have no meaning on their own.

When you visit a website and you agree to accept its cookies, the website generates a cookie (a long list of numbers and letters), and gives that cookie to your browser.

Your browser stores that cookie along with the website's URL, and the website stores the cookie alongside the URL of the page you were visiting, the date the cookie was generated, and (in some cases) actions your browser took on the page.

So, while the cookie itself is meaningless and it has no ability to perform any functionality or share any data, your browser and the website which issued the cookie can use the cookie to look up whatever data they stored alongside the cookie.

Nowadays, most sites distinguish between "performance cookies" and "marketing cookies", and possibly others.

• Performance cookies are usually intended to help you view content more quickly, etc.

• Marketing cookies are usually intended to show you content that might be more relevant to you.

The exact definitions can vary per website, so each website will usually explain what they mean.

When a website uses cookies, it usually gives you the option to:

• accept all cookies

• customize your choices (e.g., accept only performance cookies), or

• reject all cookies

As you continue to visit other pages, your browser and the website add the page URLs and other data about your visit, alongside the cookie.

Note: Some websites might require you to accept "strictly necessary cookies", which would include data like which cookie preferences you chose, data that helps the site keep track of items you just added to that website's shopping cart, etc.

How Do Performance Cookies Work?

When you revisit a page later, your browser passes the corresponding cookie back to the system as a way of saying "I saved local versions of images and functions that were on this page as of <date your browser last visited>."

If the page hasn't changed since your brower's last visit, the system and your browser won't bother to exchange the same data again, so you'll see more of the content immediately.

Also, if the website temporarily saved info like boxes that were checked last time your browser visited, it might check those boxes on your behalf, so that you can continue where you left off.

Note: In most cases, a website doesn't know that "you" visited the page and performed certain actions before (unless you actually login). It only knows "whichever browser passes this cookie back to me performed actions a, b, and c last time it visited this page."

On the other hand, if the page has newer images or functionality, or that cookie has expired, the system might tell your browser "I don't recognize that cookie, so here are the latest images and functionality, along with a new cookie." In this case, the content might take a little longer to load.

What About My Privacy?

Each website generates and stores its own set of cookies.

As long as you're using a modern and reasonably well-known browser (and you keep it up to date with the latest version), your browser will have internal security and privacy logic to prevent sharing one website's cookies and (more importantly) related browsing data with other website.

However, if you interact with third-party content on this website, then that third-party system might directly exchange its own cookies with your browser.

For example, suppose you watch a YouTube video on this website. In that case, YouTube might share its own cookie with your browser, alongside info about what videos your browser interacted with here. Later, if you visit YouTube (or another website with YouTube videos), then your browser and YouTube will exchange that cookie again, and then YouTube will suggest mushroom-related videos to you. This doesn't mean FFSC shared information with YouTube. In this example, the tracking took place directly between your browser and YouTube.

As another example, suppose this website offers you the ability to order a set of stickers, and we use a third-party printing app to show you the details. That printing app might exchange a cookie with your browser. Later, if you visit another website which uses the same sticker printing app, that printing app might remember your browser based on the cookie they exchanged, and prefill some preferences for you. In this example, FFSC didn't share information with the other website; it's just that both websites happen to use the same printing app.