What is cookies?
When you are browsing the internet, you may notice a pop up on your screen telling us that this website uses cookies. Most of the time we just accept the cookies without knowing about cookies. So lets know what cookies. Cookies is a small piece of data from a specific website that is stored on a user’s computer while they are browsing the web .They can have many functions.
1) Tracking Users Browsing Activity
It keeps track of a user’s browsing activity in order to serve up targeted information such as ads for goods or services. Suppose if you browse Amazon for Halloween costumes for dogs then you might see ads for more dog costumes on Facebook later.
2) Remembering login details
Similarly cookies can also have simple functions like remembering your login details for specific websites such as Instagram, Facebook. So that you can close out of it and then reopen it again later without having to log back in again.
3) Track site visitor count
Cookies can also allow website owners to track exactly how many unique visitors they are getting to their website because each cookie has its own unique ID. So if the user visits the same website two or three times in a day, a cookies can allow us to count this as one unique viewer so website owners can collect more accurate data about their website traffic.
Where did the cookie come from?
So lets know where the cookie came from and how did it get its name? Well the first cookie was invented in 1994 by a 24 year old programmer for Netscape communications named Lou Montuli. He was creating an online store for a company that said that their servers were getting too full from storing each individual users shopping cart data while they were browsing the store. So, Lou is 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 them money. So in this way the cookie concept was created from this. Thus, we get a pop up notification whenever we visit a website that uses cookies because they are legally obligated to inform you in their cookie policy of what they use these cookies for.
How does cookie work?
When you visit a website for the first time, For example, we are visiting an online store that uses cookies. The website puts a cookie on your hard drive that has its own unique identification code. The site then uses this ID to keep track of your session. The session means your overall visit on their website from start to end. It keeps track of things like which items you put in your shopping cart or which items you looked at. Thus, 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. They have many more functions than this but this is just some of the most common ways now.
Cookies will generally help you have a much more enjoyable user experience on the web. It saves you lots of time and headache. So It is in our hand whether to enable or disable cookies. When we visit a trusted website, then no matter. We can enable it. But when we are visiting a malicious website, it is better to disable it.
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