Internet Cookies
Cookies were introduced to Internet browsing by the pioneering firm Netscape.The name "cookie" was a term already in use in computer science for describing a piece of data held by an intermediary. so this article explains the concept of cookies, how cookies could be helpful to businesses on so many levels, and how manage- or even sometimes- block cookies.
Internet cookies are small pieces of information in text format that are downloaded to your computer when you visit many Web sites. The cookie may come from the Web site itself or from the providers of the advertising banners or other graphics that make up a Web page. Thus visiting a single Web site can actually result in the downloading of multiple cookies, each from a different source. (Karen 2002)
Cookies typically contain some kind of ID number, a domain that the cookie is valid for, and an expiration date. They may also contain other tracking information such as login names and pages visited.
What are Cookies for?
They are necessary to provide the function of “persistence”.In other words, a Website ordinarily has no memory of who comes and goes. As soon as the information that your browser requests from a site is downloaded to your computer, the connection is dropped. If you return to the site a minute later (or whenever), the site has no knowledge that you were just there. If a site has several pages and you go from one to the other the site does not remember which pages you have been to. That is, it won’t unless a cookie is on your machine to remind the site and provide continuity.
There are many reasons a given site would wish to use cookies. These range from the ability to personalize information, or to help with on-line sales/services (like on Amazon Books or eBay), or simply for the purposes of collecting demographic information. Cookies also provide programmers with a quick and convenient means of keeping site content fresh and relevant to the user's interests. (Brain 1998)
Cookies and Privacy
cookies have inevitably been turned into a tracking mechanism used by advertisers. In principle, cookies are only accessible to the site that originated them but large advertising agencies with many clients can easily circumvent this restriction by collecting information for all their clients under one domain. A fairly harmless advertising application of cookies is to rotate banner ads as you go from page to page to make sure that you do not see the same ads over and over. However, there are more invasive tracking methods that might involve cookies and therein arise privacy issues.
Managing Cookies
In theory you can simply refuse all cookies. All standard browsers allow for this option. However, this is not a very practical solution. Too many sites use cookies for useful or benign purposes. Also many sites require cookies to be enabled before they let you view them.
A better alternative is to selectively block and/or remove undesirable cookies while keeping good ones. There are a number of approaches.
• One way is by do-it-yourself methods involving such things as editing the actual contents of the IE cookie folder.
• The major browsers have added ways of selectively configuring for cookies. For example, Internet Explorer has Privacy settings with a number of cookie options. Among the options is the ability to list specific sites whose cookies are to be rejected. This gives a PC user the option of refusing cookies from certain advertising agencies. (Robertson 2002)
To conclude, cookies are harmless text files that enable companies to record your preferences and customize your visits in the future, which can be managed by many approaches to control when they are sent to your browser, or remove them all together.
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