All You Need To Know About Browser Cookies

Cookies is a term that everyone who uses a computer has probably heard about it before, why do websites tell you that they are using cookies. It doesn't make any sense, what is the link between a delicious chocolate chip cookie and a website.

Well in this post we will be talking about Browser Cookies, which is something a little different than your classic chocolate cookies.

What are Browser Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of files that are stored on your browser's cache. It contains only text and it tells the browser that the last time you came on this specific website you did this and that. And so by storing that information the cookie helps you remain logged in all your accounts and remembers that you have already seen the promotion pop-up.

With the help of the information stored on the cookie the browser can give you a much more enhanced experience and help you from not performing repetitive tasks like logging in again and again.

Cookies are very common and almost everyone who uses the internet has them.

How do they work?

Cookies work by kind of assigning you an id. So that whenever you visit the website again, it can use that ID to track your session activity, and know that what did you do on the website, the last time you visited. These things are managed and made by the browser itself, and you can view them as well.

But if you think about it, this can be a security threat if your all you cookies are accessible to all the websites you visit - Well fortunately this isn't possible as your browser makes sure that websites can only look at their own cookies, so Amazon cannot view your Facebook activity and vice-versa.

The Benefits and the Draw-backs of Cookies

Cookies are an extremely important thing in browsers, they help enhance the experience quite a bit!

The Goods:

• Prevent one from doing repetitive tasks

• Can help give you a more personalized experience on sites by recommending stuff more relevant to you

• Make sure that websites remember your preferences

The Bad:

Cookies are pretty helpful, but they can be used for doing bad as well. Some cookies can track your session and give some information to advertising networks, this helps them give you more personalized ads.

An another way cookies can be very dangerous is if they get stolen - If a cookie gets stolen then the thief can easily access your account, they don't get password of your account but they get access to the cookie which tells the website that this person had already logged in, and in this way the thief can access their account and make purchases and stuff - It gets worse to know that cookies aren't necessarily encrypted either!