How does Mister Linky remember you? Or if he doesn’t, what’s up with that? In a word, cookies.

When you leave your link on someone’s linky widget, Mister Linky tries to set a cookie, allowing your browser to help Mister Linky remember who you are. This also enables the smiley-faced user icon that you can click on to delete your link in case you left it in error.

But what if Mister Linky doesn’t remember you? It may mean that you’ve disabled third-party cookies, or your browser has disabled them for you. Third-party simply means that the site you went to belonged to someone other than Mister Linky, but Mister Linky is trying to set a cookie. There is usually little harm in allowing this, but the choice is yours.

If you do want to allow third-party cookies and you’re using Internet Explorer 7, here are the illustrated (see below) instructions. Alt-T will get you the Tools menu and from here you can select the Internet Options command. Click on the Privacy tab and then on the Advanced button and the Advanced Privacy dialog will apear. Make sure that you’re overriding the automatic settings and allowing the third-party cookies. Now Mister Linky should be able to remember you. If you run into any problems, remember to use the help desk.

Now for the illustrations…