So everybody loves cookies right? That sweet sugary goodness that gives you that sugar rush when you take that delicious gooey bite of your favorite treat. But wait, what about online cookies, are these the same thing. What makes up a cookie and why do they even exist? What is its purpose and do they have any benefits for you as a user.
If your like me then you probably asked the same questions as myself. Maybe your like me and you visited a site and you get this annoying pop up asking if you will allow cookies on this site? What does that even mean?
Have no fear, as a front end web developer I want to know all that I can about the web; what its made of and how it works–and cookies are all apart of it.
So I decided to take a journey in exploring all about these so called cookies today. So if you want a taste of these cookies you’ve come to the right place.
What Is A Cookie?
Cookies, Oh cookies. When you hear the term its kind of an interesting term. Really it’s just weird. What is a cookie doing online. Well to begin cookies were first created in 1994 by a programmer named Lou Montulli. It actually stems, or is shortened from the word “magic cookie”, which to me still doesn’t make any sense, but if you’ve written code before then you know sometimes you’ll come across things that just seem out of place.
So to break down what cookies are in its simplest definition according to Norton it keeps track of the sites you visited and your browser activity.
Really when I think of what a cookie does it simply is a tracker.
It is a way for the website to track your activity.
I know when you hear this all sorts of skepticism arises and you feel like your being watched. Well I have news for you…you are!
No, but seriously you are lol. I say that with the notion apart from your personal information being stored in the cookie. So when you visit a site cookies are set in place to store certain preferences to help your browsing experience become a little more convienent.
For example, let’s say you visited a site that was written in another language and you want to translate it so that you may be able to understand. The browser will then ask you if you want to save these preferences so when you return it will remember your computer and save you time on your next visit.
Or let’s say you visited your favorite online retailer and you wanted to purchase a few products. You add one item to the cart but still wanted to do a little perusing through the store. Without the cookie your item would not be able to save the data to the cart and would reset to zero once you click on another link on the site.
So you see it can have benefits for your online experience.
Cookies are plain simple text files that store data to your browsers storage to remember specific insights about your activity.
Another question that arises since cookies store data, then what is the difference between a cookie and your cache.
Easy cookies store your data and your caches stores the files of your site for faster loading.
So cookies track of what you do and not who you are, yet it can do that to…
How Cookies Work
So there are different kinds of cookies: short term and long term. Short term cookies are referred to as session cookies. What this does is only track your activity when your on a website, but once you leave that site or close your browser the cookies are deleted.
Tracking cookies are more for sites like the shopping example I gave earlier. It stores information in the cart so you can continue shopping and return to your cart later with all your items still intact.
Lastly authentication. These are for sites that ask for a login and passwords and it can save this data for easier access to the content on the site. so it only stores your personal information, rather your credentials, if you allow it, which today many users opt out for this option. It saves time when navigating through so many sites.
It sort of reminds me of the finger scan on an iPhone, I think its a similar concept.
One of the reasons cookies are useful is because the data does not change when transferring information back and forth. This means that cookies are not executable. In other words it can not be over written but there are ways to go around that and can cause security issues but we will get to that in a little.
So because cookies are files used to be stored on your computer storage it takes up the memory from your storage. This lead developers to create a way to now store that data on their own system or server so when a particular site is visited it will access that information based on your previous session. Thus introducing the invention of…
Third Party Cookies
Have you ever visited a site and seen advertisements on the side that may cater to your similar interests. Say hello to your cookies at work. Advertisers will set up third party cookies on certain sites so when you visit the site it collects information about you and thus once you visit other sites where advertisers have placed cookies are now able to use algorithms to display ads based off of the sites you visited and links you might of clicked or posts you liked.
Scary? It can be and that’s why the privacy policy, what I believe, pops up even more now to ask for your information to collect this data. Before I think they just took this data without your consent.
No worries. There is a way to manage your sweet tooth, sorry I couldn’t resist. You can manage your cookies so that certain sites won’t have access to your data. This can all be done in your browser settings.
Norton has a great simple guide on how to adjust your settings. If you don’t know how to do this still you know my favorite resource to find my answers is google, so let google be your friend.
So in conclusion cookies can be beneficial in your browsing experience, but its up to the user how you want to share your cookies or just keep all the cookies to yourself.
Another great resource to understanding cookies is by adversitement. Check out the video below.