Today most of our business dealings are through online. You pay bills, purchase items, book tickets etc online. But have you ever wondered how websites are able to remember your user id and password or how a shopping portal has all the items you have gone through in your account? All these details and other customized online experience is made possible through Cookies.
Cookies are tiny files posted by websites on your browser. The information on the cookie file travels back and forth between the user browser (internet explorer) and the website the browser visits. For example, you visit Google today. Immediately Google will place a cookie on your browser. And in future, may be couple of months later you visit Google again, your browser will automatically send the same cookie ID to Google.
Benefits of Cookies
- Helps to tailor your online experience by recognizing the sites you visit
- Helps Google to remember your preferences. For example, you prefer to see your search results in English or that you prefer a safe search filter
- Remembers which city you are in and retrieves weather info accordingly
- Helps you to keep a track on your stocks in finance
Cookies Do Not
- Stores names, emails or phone numbers
- Run programs in your computers
- Access information from your drives or transport viruses
There are two types of Cookies
- First party – travel back and forth and generate and produce information
- Third party cookie – travel back and forth between your browser and a website of a company that displays an ad on the website you visit.
Cookie ID is a collection of letters and numbers. You can turn off Cookies whenever you want or you can set up preferences where you can refuse to accept cookies from particular websites. If you disable cookies, websites won’t be able to retrieve your past data or save settings for the future.
