Unveiling the real taste of Internet Cookies

This article is contributed and reviewed by Ishan Rawat, Prakhar Gupta, and Akanksha Verma.

Have you also encountered this?

We expect yes! ( If the answer is no, then your innocence deserves two minutes of silence)

Based on our previous expectation, we pose you another question: have you ever wondered what these cookies mean and why do they pop up on almost every new website?

The third question: Can we eat them in hunger (of course, not😜)?

Ending with this little rapid-fire round, we try to check if they are sweet or bitter(LAME, we know it is, we ourselves are LAME).

What are Cookies?

Imagine a magical world where no one knows you and there’s a particular memory-erasing charm done on everyone such that once you meet anyone, he forgets you once again after the meeting.

Obliviate!!!
What a mess! Well, that is somewhat your world without cookies on the internet!

Your identity shall be forgotten when you head on from one webpage to another. Also, various sections on a website that before were suited according to your preferences would now show content as if you are a new user.

If cookies are so powerful, then we need to look at them a bit deeper.

So, cookies are little text files stored on your computer.

What! Just text files? Yes!

These files are created by web servers on the request of the website you visit to store some sort of data which finally ends up enhancing your experience on the website by giving more personalized stuff to you.

PERSONALIZED. This word is quite deep. This can encompass a lot of things regarding your activity on the website and also your interests. Beware!

And then if they are able to read the cookie, does it mean they have access to our whole storage?
That’s something serious!

Hold on.

A website can only read a cookie it has stored on your computer and it neither has access to other cookies nor to your private information stored on your computer.

How? Actually, whenever you visit a website, your browser sends the same cookie to the webserver which was once stored by that website, only on your browser( you’ll find cookies if you dig a bit inside your browser’s source folder).

So, we are safe, the website can not access any other information.

Actually not! To know a bit more about this we first classify cookies.

Types Of Cookies

• Session Cookies- These are temporary cookies that exist until their session expires. They help the server to store one-time stuff like your game scores, shopping carts, logins, and others. These exist only when you’re logged in and are generally deleted when you close the website.
• Persistent Cookies- These are also known as first-party cookies and shall track your online preferences on a particular website. These cookies are stored on your computer for a long time (until their expiry date). Also, they are quite important since your identity of being logged in is stored here itself.
• Third-party Cookies- The foremost aim of these cookies is to collect information regarding third-party ads. Cross sidetracking is another work done by them. The domain of these cookies would be entirely different from the domain of the website that you are currently on.

To be honest, third party cookies sound a bit unappealing.

But still, the hunger inside us says us to taste third-party cookies😋

Third-Party Cookies

This monster which invades your privacy is also called a tracking cookie.

To make this more clear, we provide a real-world instance. Look a bit carefully at the screenshot, we have shared.

This is a popular website for people with interest in computer science to practice puzzles and coding questions, but from where this ‘ICICI premium’ advertisement came?

This is what we were talking about, the references of another website from an entirely different domain of your current website. This is the power of third-party cookies. They get stored on your browser and help pop up related advertisements on every site you visit.

With this horrifying example, we now expect you would be able to identify such third-party activities. (Though there’s a lot happening on you back)

Taking a step forward, let’s understand what do these cookies do and why?

Third-party cookies track your interests, location, age, and search trends, and collect information so that other companies can provide you with different advertisements, not only on a particular website but on multiple websites (that you visit).

These cookies can even have long term storage of your browsing history and other patterns that can be intrusive in your privacy. You can visualize it as the same case when someone is always stalking you which is damn annoying.

The major problem is that the webmasters usually share the information about your web activity with data analysis firms or those that design targeted marketing campaigns.

Note: Third-party tracking is generally achieved by websites storing cookies on a visitor’s hard drive. In incognito mode too, your data is tracked in exactly the same way as normal mode!!

Alarm! One minute!!!! So then other types of cookies possess no threat to us. Actually NO, they do!

Dangers associated with persistent and session cookies

Have you heard of airplane hijacks? Yes right. Similarly, there is something called session hijacking. Somebody (obviously an attacker) gets into your session after acquiring those session details in some evil way. These ways are nothing but cyber attacks.

Then what about persistent cookies? Are they 100% safe? Obviously NO, well even your favorite hand wash kills 99% germs! They can be used by advertisers to record information about a user’s web browsing habits over an extended period of time.

Protect Your Privacy

Now, let’s wear armor suit against intruders on the internet. Another lame one. It seems to be an oxymoron if we talk about our privacy on the Internet.

But hey, you can be more aware of your privacy concerns on this Internet which is full of mysteries.

Start keeping track of your settings in your browser, check cookies stored on your browser, Blocking or deleting cookies can be an option.

Also, there are session and persistent cookies too which are really essential otherwise you won’t be recognized on a website(LOL).

To prevent session hijacks, it is favorable to connect through secure networks, preferably through HTTPS in common terms.

So, blocking third-party cookies is a handy and affordable solution to the problem of invasion in your privacy. You can find this option in your browser’s settings to block third-party cookies. For example, in Firefox, you can go to the privacy setting to block them.

And there’s another solution too: for particular websites, you can also go logged out or turn on incognito mode for blocking cookies.

Hopefully, you now know some malicious intentions of third-party cookies so, from now onwards you need to be more careful about websites you visit and references that you open up within a webpage and also settings of your web browser regarding cookies.

Someone has rightly said: “Prevention is better than cure!”

So with this let’s say goodbye !!

Hope u liked it :)