How Worried Should You Be About Internet Cookies?

In this article, we review what cookies are in the computer realm, their purpose and how to manage them.

What Is a Cookie?

A cookie is what we call a small text file that a website stores on your computer’s hard drive or in your mobile devices.

Origin / First-party cookies

The original purpose of cookies was to provide you with a better browsing experience. Here is how it works: when you visit a website, its web server (the computer where the web content is stored) creates a small text file and transmits it to the web browser you are using (the software that retrieves and displays the web page). The web browser stores that small text file on your computer. The file contains your website preferences, such as language, layouts, configuration, or items in your shopping cart. It serves as memory, so that the next time you visit that website, the web browser ‘remembers’ what your preferences are by pulling the stored file from your computer and applying those settings to the website automatically. For example, if you went to a website and placed items in its shopping cart, but didn’t buy them right away, the cookie would save the items you placed in the shopping cart on a cookie in your computer and in your future visit to that website, the cookie would automatically bring them back up into your shopping cart– you wouldn’t have to go search for those items again.