What Do Cookies Actually Mean?
If you are browsing the internet, definitely you should have seen a notification pop up similar to what you see in the below picture telling you that this website uses cookies. Most of the time you just slap on Agree button at a glance to get your work done ;).So HTTP Cookie is something that is a very familiar term among us. But the meaning and its behaviour are unknown to many. You’re likely here because you want to know what exactly are cookies, and how do they actually work. We are not talking about that tasty and sweet cookie thing, rather we’re talking about website cookies, which are more formally called HTTP cookies.
Right then, will jump straight away to the concept. So a cookie is a small piece of data from a specific website that is stored on a user’s computer while you’re browsing the web, and these cookies can have many functions, such as keeping track of a user’s browsing activity, in order to serve up targeted information, such as advertisements for goods or services. To simplify let's say that you are browsing eBay for a Perfume and later that day when you scroll Facebook you might see ads for more perfume on Facebook. You may be wondering how that happened. But that was you who slapped on accept all cookies button right? Furthermore, cookies can also have simple functions like remembering your login details for a specific website such as Facebook, so that you can close out of it, and then reopen it again later, without having to log back in again which makes our life easier.
Since a Cookie has its own unique ID, website owners can keep track of exactly how many visitors getting to their website. If the user visits the same website two three or more times in a day, a cookie can allow us to count this as one unique viewer. So website owners can collect more accurate data about their website traffic.
Bit of History
Let's have a bit of History to this so-called cookie. So from where did, the cookie comes from and how did it get its name. The first cookie was invented in 1994 by a 24-year-old programmer, named Louis J. “Lou” Montulli, he was creating an online store for a company whose servers were getting too full from storing each individual user’s shopping cart data while they were browsing the store each time. So Lou was asked to figure out a way to store each user’s shopping cart data on their own computer, which would then save server space for the company, and save a huge amount of money and space. So he thought back to an old computing token called the magic cookie, which was used to identify when somebody would log into a system by passing a tiny bit of information between the server and their computer, Lou then recreated this concept for web browsing, and thus, the modern-day cookie was born cookies today are still used to identify your computer, but now they have the added function of also tracking your activity, which can be very helpful, or a breach in privacy depending on how the website decides to use this information, which is why you get that little notification whenever you visit a website that uses cookies because they’re legally obligated to inform you in their cookie policy of what they use these cookies for.
How do cookies work?
Best for last! how does a cookie work? Let's get this done with an example of you browsing an online store for the first time. The website puts a cookie on your hard drive that has its own unique ID code. The site then uses this ID to keep track of your overall session from start to end. The reason for doing this is to keep track of things like which items you put in your shopping cart, Or, which items you looked at so it can suggest similar items, or even save coupon codes for you, that can be used later even if you close out of the website and come back to it, and they have many more functions than this but this is just some of the most common ways.
Third-Party Cookie
You may question a cookie is only specific to a particular website, meaning that they can’t track you on a totally different website? If no how eBay suggestions appear on Facebook? Well, there’s another type of cookie called a third-party cookie for these kinds of interrelationships among the sites. Let's try to clarify this with an example. A user might go to the website ebay.com. First-party cookies are those set by ebay.com on this domain. A third-party cookie is one that is set by another website, such as advertising or a social media site for example Facebook. which means that Facebook can now send their own cookies, through this website in order to track your activity, and then most likely serve up some targeted advertisements for you on your Facebook newsfeed later.
The Take-Away
Cookies have been passed and allowed to use by GDPR, which is the general data protection regulation, allowing users to opt-out of the use of cookies if they choose so. But not all cookies are privacy breaching parasites and they will generally help you have a much more enjoyable user experience on the web and save you lots of time and headache.
Everything has two sides so some can be privacy breaching too. So keep mindful of that as well…
