What the heck is a third party and a cookie?

Question

on the computer and the internet

Answer 1

1st party- your ISP
2nd party- you
3rd party- anyone else

cookie- text file given to you by some websites when you visit them, stores info like what pages you visited, how long you stayed etc

Answer 2

When you use any service, you enter in to an agreement with the service provider. For example, you download a software program from the Internet. When you try to install the program, a license agreement appears and asks if you accepted the terms for installing the program; this is referred to as the "End User License Agreement" (EULA). The first party is you. The second party is the provider and the third party is anyone besides you and the second party. Why the third party is mentioned so often is because of the law. Frequently, some companies offer a free program and/ or service but requires you to register with them. Usually, you need to provide a name and an e-mail address. Unfortunately, the company can then give or sell your information to another party, the third party. Why? Because they can send you a ton of spam. That is the price you pay for a free program or service. Not all companies are so unethical. Good company usually have a privacy policy which prevents them from selling your information to someone else. As a general rule, you should read the license agreement before agreeing to it.

A cookie is something else entirely. When you visit a website, the website will download some information on to your web browser. Websites identify you with the cookie. For example, your shopping on Amazon.com, Amazon's cookie will record what you searched for and what you bought. Amazon will then use this information to display relevant ads or products to you. There are many uses for cookies besides just buying information. For example, I use the website dailyrotation.com. The website allows me to choose the layout I want to use. The website will record this information on to the cookie so the next time I visit I don't have to set the layout again. Another example, I logged in to my Google account and I don't want to always enter my user id and password. No problem, I allow Google to place a cookie on my web browser which enters my user id and password automatically. However, many sites and organizations have abused the use of cookies. Sometimes they are used as a way to track your movements on the Internet. For some people, it is a privacy concern.

Answer 3

People answered your question mostly.
I will just explain briefly what cookie is.. and what third party cookie is (I think that is what you want to know..).

Cookie is just a text files website sets and stored locally on your computer. There can be many use of cookies, but basically the website would like to know it's same you when you revisit the site.

Simple example can be like this.
When you visit say acme.com. They ask you what your name is. You type in CookieLover, then site greeted you Hello, CookieLover.
Next day, you visited same site and this time, site greeted you with your name CookieLover even without asking. How do they do that? Simple.. First time when you wrote your name, site created little text file on your computer and wrote your name in it. Next time you came back site just read the contents from the cookie file so they know your name and you have visited them before.

Cookie is very useful in many way, however mostly abused by data miners who keep track of your surfing behavior for their marketing revenue.

Well.. now.. don't think cookie is all bad. Some of the sites you can't properly view them without accepting cookies(specially old ones.

What is third party cookie? Well, as you have guessed, it's a cookie set by provider other than the website you are actually visiting. Mostly this cookies are set by advertising company who have interest on your surfing behavior such as what kind of sites you are visiting and etc so they can customize advertisement related to your interest. It's good.. isn't it?.. Well.. that is up to you.

I normally accept cookies from the trusted sites but reject the third party cookies. I have my REAL personal information registered with Microsoft, for example, but what happen if Microsoft buy up one of this big advertisement company? Microsoft will be able to match my personal information with all the sites that I visited which were tracked by that advertisement company.

So it's not really good idea to accept third party cookies.. and mostly no need to accept them.

Answer 4

Hiya-
A "third party" means that a third party, or a company/entity other than the person or company who you are downloading from either has contributed to the software in some way, or that you will most likely get spam.
A cookie is a a piece of info stored on your computer by websites you visit. I am including a great link I think will be helpful to you.

Answer 5

A third party is just an outside program or company that adds on to other company products. They don't have a compact privacy policy meaning they aren't considered an actual company. A cookie is a piece of information a website stores to your computer so it can use it when you browse and then come back later. It tells the website what you did and such.

Answer 6

just clean them out with this

Privacy Guardian also restores valuable hard drive space and speeds up system performance by cleaning out old and unused temporary records. It allows you to simply and securely erase privacy sensitive files from Windows, Microsoft Office, Netscape, Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer.firefox all temporary internet files & Cookies every Privacy Guardian is simple to install and easy to use.
It is suitable for Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera and Mozilla Firefox Internet browsers and can be set to automatically protect your privacy at regular intervals. With Privacy Guardian one click of the mouse all clean
Privacy Guardian is at the bottom of the pctools website and you can download it and use it one click of the mouse and all is clean
http://www.pctools.com/privacy-guardian/