Cookies or Tracking Cookies
Tracking Cookies are small text files that certain websites store on your computer. These files contain some basic identification, allowing the website to identify you when you visit next. Often this feature is useful; it allows you to visit certain sites and not have to log in again and again. Rarely cookies can be used for unethical purposes, often when two sites work together in order to conduct aggressive advertising. In this scenario, one site recognizes the computer even if the user has never visited it before. From the cookie that website can learn when you logged into its affiliated site, how long you stayed there and what you looked for. This information can then be used to gather contextual advertising. When Cookies are used in this way, they are referred to as tracking cookies. Sites that employ this tactic often include those set up for rogue Spyware Applications and less-than reputable shopping sites.
Many new online users think that a cookie is a program. It is not and therefore is incapable of executing any actions, malicious or otherwise. A cookie is a simple pack of data, often a simple text file, that a server sends to a user’s browser and that the browser then sends back to the server when that server is accessed. I means that certain servers can store a cookie on your computer and when you return to their website, it will recognize you and welcome you to your Homepage. Deleting the cookie does not hurt your computer. It only means that the website doesn’t recognize you.
So what’s the big deal? Potentially a cookie can aid in the tracking of web activity. These so called tracking cookies may not monitor your presence at one site, but at multiple sites and how often you visit them. If malicious web hosts want to target advertising at you personally, they will probably use cookies to figure out what you look at. Also, by monitoring the web sites you visit cookies can tell these hosts things such as where you bank and shop.
Removing cookies never hurts as they can be resent, but the majority of cookies are harmless. However disabling cookies in your browser can cause many legitimate web sites to work incorrectly as many shopping carts rely on cookies to keep track of what’s in your cart and what you’ve updated. Deleting cookies is a way of keeping your computer at the same time clean.
