No, not these kinds of cookies. (James M Thresher - FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) For years, cookies have been frightening Web users who aren’t exactly pleased that sites can track their browsing history and get information about their interests, locations and finances. The federal government has debated ways to protect online privacy.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reports, major Web sites such as MSN.com and Hulu.com have been found using not only cookies, but “supercookies.”

The powerful new — and legal — techniques can track people’s online activities without being detected by users, which makes it different from the more easily detectable average cookies, the Journal article said.

The files Hulu and MSN installed are also capable of re-creating users’ profiles after people deleted regular cookies.

MSN and Hulu said the tracking was inadvertent, and both companies promised to investigate.

The Atlantic has branded the supercookie “the next online privacy battle.” Newser’s headline about supercookies could inspire fear: “Supercookies stalk users, steal history.” TechJournal warned that supercookies are “hard to delete.”

But not impossible.

FightIdentityTheft.com has a full explainer on how you can remove the supercookie. The method is more involved than dealing with a regular cookie, but you might want to read it because — as Fight Identity Theft argues: “they are pervasive... and won't be going away anytime soon.”