Do I really have tracking cookies?

Avast Premier alerted me to 5 tracking cookies on my PC. Of course the next step ist to try to sell me Anti-Track. A feature like this should really be included in a “Premier” product, right?

Wait a minute, haven’t I got Avast Cleanup Premium? Ran a scan, no tracking cookies found. >:(

What’s going on here Avast? Are you trying to lose customers? Anyone else had this issue?

How can I independently check if I have tracking cookies and from which websites?

You can disable the ads in the paid versions: Avast GUI → Settings → Personal Privacy

Best way to clean out cookies you do not want is use the browsers delete history option, which includes cookies. Then Run CCleaner at its default settings to remove anything leftover.

CCleaner allows you to save all the cookies you want to keep, things like forum logins etc too so they won’t be erased unless you choose the browser History delete Everthing option. It is a very convenient tool compared to having faff around finding them in your browser profile folder (hidden by default) as is the case with Firefox and its derivatives.

If your browser is Firefox (or one of its forks) please DO NOT run Ccleaner.

It has a long history of breaking Firefox profiles and in any case it will delete the record of sites which the browser should be opening via HSTS (CCleaner treats them as cookies: they are not).

Thanks alanb for the hint. Now I know why my browser history is almost empty! I assume that ccleaner deleted most of the items, including my visit to this forum… We live and learn!
I’m going to uninstall ccleaner right now.

However, I still don’t know why one Avast product says I have tracking cookies, when another product can’t find them.

Is there no way to prevent tracking cookies being installed in the first place?