What is a Cookie?

To Internet newcomers, cookies may simply conjure up images of sweet little biscuit treats that get eaten. In the Internet world, however, cookies don’t necessarily have such a delicious connotation, and lately they’re causing quite a stir (and not with chocolate milk either!). Ok, enough with the food analogies, let’s get on to the real meat - oops - of the matter.

A cookie is a very small data file placed on your hard drive by a web server while you’re visiting a web site. This file contains specific user information, which can then be later read by the web server when you revisit the site. Cookies cannot extract any data from your computer system, nor can they contain viruses. Servers can only read their own cookies, not other cookies placed on your computer by other servers.

Cookies were originally developed to serve a beneficial purpose. For example, on many sites where you have to log in, a cookie is placed on your computer to save that information. That is why when you revisit certain sites multiple times (like Amazon) the site recognizes you and remembers certain information about you without you having to re-type it all the time. Similarly, cookies allow a web site to remember your user name and password so you don’t have to log in all the time.

Another example of the cookie at work is when a web site personalizes its pages according to your preferences. You answer questions about region, age, music, news, stocks, etc. and a cookie with this particular information remembers it. When you visit the site again, it reads the cookie and custom-tailors the site to your interests.

When ordering online, cookies can be used to remember what you have placed in your shopping cart. So, if for some reason the shopping process is broken (power outage or someone needs to use the phone) the site that you were shopping on will remember who you are and what you were about to buy.

Advertisers can also use cookies to make sure the consumer sees only fresh advertisements. The ad servers send a cookie to your computer for each banner ad, then when they get that info back they make sure that you have not seen the same ad twice. Therefore, producing more exposure on their network for different clients (or for the same client with different ads).

Cookies have been raising some privacy concerns. Though up until now, cookies haven’t been able to reveal any specific name or personal information about you, what they can do is be used as tracking devices to help advertisers and web sites build up profiles about you based on the data they collect from your site visits. The ruckus now is that the largest Internet advertising network, DoubleClick, is striving to match your exact name and personal information with the data they collect from your online user patterns. They say it’s only to be able to serve you more custom-tailored ads; privacy advocates scream rights infringement.

If you do not trust cookies and are worried about your privacy rights, you likely have the option to disable them on your browser, depending upon your version. For specific information, and more details about cookies, visit the Unofficial Cookie FAQ web site.

For more in-depth information about cookies, consider these resources:

Netscape
JunkBusters
The Internet & Privacy Legislation
Electronic Privacy Information Center

As for me, I’ll stick with the baking kind.

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