What are Cookies?

DVRU
DVRU
Nov 7 · 5 min read
http://www.reactiongifs.com/tag/cookie/
http://www.reactiongifs.com/tag/cookie/

What are Cookies?, besides being one of our delicious guilty pleasures, a cookie can also satisfy our user experience as well as our appetite. As a user, we depend on cookies on storing very important information about us without us even second guessing where and how this process even take place. Let’s dive a little deeper into our cravings for cookies since they are extremely delicious and also very vital to understand where our information is being stored.

A brief History of Cookies, Cookies were created in 1994 by an employee of Netscape communications, the same company that made the browser. This employee was creating an online shop and he didn't want to store the contents of that shopping cart onto the server, instead he wanted to wait to save it on the computers of the visitors, right and until they made their purchase. The reason for this is simple, if the server doesn't have to keep track of everyones shopping cart it has less work to do and can save a lot of money. In that same year, Netscape browser implemented cookies, as well as Internet Explorer which which followed in the next year in 1995, however two years later, in 1996, the first concerns were raised when it was discovered that cookies could potentially invade our privacy.

Jackson, T (1996–02–12). “This Bug in Your PC is a Smart Cookie” . Financial Times.
Jackson, T (1996–02–12). “This Bug in Your PC is a Smart Cookie” . Financial Times.

When Cookies were made they were documents containing helpful information about you, your preferences and basically anything you were interested in, for example when visiting a website and you select a certain language, you would first tell the website your language preference, then the website would then save that information onto your computer into a document which is called a Cookie, so then the next time you visit that website, it would remember your language and let you view the website in the language you had chosen without you having you having to select your language again all from that cookie it had saved earlier.

Cookies are not limited to remembering just you language, they can contain any kind of information, but so much text, apart from its size the possibilities are endless, what exactly is saved to a cookie is up-to the creator of the website you are visiting, such as when visiting a site, when adding items to your shopping cart, and all the links you clicked on that certain website, pretty much leaving a breadcrumb trail on the internet.

As a user, how do we relate to most websites and translate our information?, we set up and account and login without thinking how they're storing our information and where is it even being stored, lets take it step by step and take a look at how cookies work.
When we’re on a website which requires you to login and see the contents of this particular site, when you log in, your browser sends your username and password to the server, who verifies them and if everything processes correctly, sends you the requested content, but a word of caution, there are some limitations, the HTTP protocol, which is what we use to browse the internet, is stateless, which is a condition of having no previous data to address, meaning when you make another request to that same server, it has forgotten who you are and will ask you to login again, which can be very time consuming, when you browse any site and click on something, you are asked to login again every time.
This is where cookies can save your user experience as well as your cravings, when you still log in to the website, the server still validates your credentials, if everything processes correctly, the server not only respond with the content but also sends a cookie to your browser. The cookies are then stored on your computer and submitted to the server with every request you make to that website, that cookie contains a unique identifier that allows the server to remember who you are and keep you logged in as well as any settings you may have changed, which takes us to third party cookies.

A third party cookie belongs to a domain different from the one shown in the address bar, which typically appears when web pages feature content from external websites, such as banner ads. Lets say you visit a site, which may contains a couple of ads, these ads in most cases are bits of other websites embedded into that particular side so that site you’re lookin at may not have saved your cookies but where are these ads coming from?, the website that the ads are from has saved your cookies to your computer earlier, it can identify you and the sites you have viewed and save information about you through other websites.
So while you're on a that particular site, and start browsing other sites on any other information, the ads on those websites can identify you, look up your information in their system and show ads that you're most likely interested in while saving information about what you're doing online.

It is up to the creators of a website to determine what information they do and do not store, and what they use that information for, Cookies aren't meant to be misused, they are a tool and intended to be useful and create a user friendly experience.


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