A
cookie is a file saved in the user’s system. Cookies are created when the user
accesses a web page; the browser finds it easier to navigate within the site
and any information the user may have given while visiting the website, such as
email address. Cookies are absolutely necessary for sites having huge
databases. The content of a cookie is mainly the URL of the website, the
duration of the cookie’s abilities and a random number together called the ID.
With such little information that the cookie contains, it is not really
possible to reveal any confidential information of the user.
Session and
Persistent Cookie
Without
cookies, websites and their servers have no memory. Without a cookie, every
time you open a new web page, the server where that page is stored will treat
you like a completely new visitor. The main two categories of cookies are
Session and Permanent Cookies. Web pages have no memory. A user navigating between web pages will be
treated by the website as a completely new visitor every time he visits the
site. Session cookies enable the website to keep track of page visits so the
user is not asked for the same information that’s already available with the
site. Persistent cookie files remain in the browser’s sub folder and are
activated once again once the user visits the website that created that
particular cookie. Persistent cookies help websites remember the user’s information
and settings when you visit them in the future. This results in faster and more
convenient access. Thus, cookies allow us to proceed trough many pages of a
site quickly and easily without having to authenticate or reprocess each new
area of visit.
Cookie
Profiling
When
cookies are collected to create a certain idea about a user, it is called
Cookie profiling. The information that people reveal to each site they visit can
be used by system administrators to build extensive personal profiles of
visitors. By automatically placing a cookie on visitor’s web browsers, servers
register data on the cookie. This allows administrators to view the history of
site’s users, the advertisements they have viewed and the type of online
transactions they have conducted. What is important to note here is that sites
can only access cookies from their own domain. While cookies can be useful in
some situations, some people see this as invasion of privacy.
Ad-serving
using cookies
Third-party
ad serving cookies solve a lot of problems that normally arise in a situation where
the website’s visitor loads content from the website but the ads come from another
site. Cookies help the ad serving website. Cookies limit the number of times an
ad is shown. This function comes in particularly handy when dealing with pop up
ads. Cookies ensure that a pop up only shows up once per visit. Some ads are
more effective when shown in a particular order or sequence. By helping the
website you’re viewing remember the pages you’ve visited during your browsing
session, cookies enable ads to show up in a particular order. Advertisers need
to know how many times their ads were shown on publisher’s websites. Cookies
allow the third party ad serving website to collect this information. Cookies
allow advertisers to keep track of how many people visited the advertiser’s
websites through a click or a response, on the ads shown by third party as
serving companies on publisher’s websites. This feature helps both the ad
serving company and the advertiser dertermine if a particular advertising
campaign produced the desired results.
Drawbacks
Besides
privacy concerns, cookies also have some technical drawbacks. They do not
always accurately identify users and can be used for security tasks. If more
than one browser is used on a computer. Each has a separate storage area for
cookies. Hence, cookies do not identify a person, but a combnation of a user account, a computer
and a web browser. Thus, anyone who uses multiple accounts, computers or
browsers has multiple sets of cookies.
The
use of cookies may generate an incompatibility between the state of the client and
the state as stored on the cookie. If the user aquires a cookie and then clicks
the ‘back’ button of the browser, the state on the browser is generally not the
same as before that acquisition. This can lead to confusion and bugs.
Removing Cookies
Although
cookies are very useful to navigate the Internet, you definitely need to know
the basics of removing your cookie files so you can protect your privacy
online. There are two kinds of cookies-regular text browser cookies and flash
cookies. To ensure maximum web browsing privacy, you have to delete both kinds
of cookies. Too many Internet users delete cookies which are text-based and
leave flash cookies intact. This doesn't protect your privacy. You have to know
how to delete flash cookies, too. There is no one standardized way to remove
cookies since different browsers clear cookies using different procedures. Here are the steps to disable cookies based on your browser.
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[1] http://www.allaboutcookies.org/
[2] http://www.mediabuzz.com/
[3] http://files.investis.com/
[4] http://www.londonstimes.us/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/
[6] http://www.wikipedia.org/
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