What is a cookie? Why does it exist?

Answer 1

The main purpose of cookies is to identify users and possibly prepare customized Web pages for them. When you enter a Web site using cookies, you may be asked to fill out a form providing such information as your name and interests. This information is packaged into a cookie and sent to your Web browser which stores it for later use. The next time you go to the same Web site, your browser will send the cookie to the Web server. The server can use this information to present you with custom Web pages. So, for example, instead of seeing just a generic welcome page you might see a welcome page with your name on it.

Answer 2

Cookies are text files that websites place on your temporary internet directory to remember information about the user. Some of these information includes last login time, user's display preference and even login details.

If you notice on some sites where you're required to log in, you will see a checkbox named 'Remember Me', now that stores your login information on your computer as a cookie and it'll be extracted the next time you visit the site.

Cookies contains variables which can be called by the website to display the relevant content, for example you chose black as your preferred background, the site will set 'bgColor="black"' in your cookie so that the next time the site calls the bgColor variable, it will return "black".

However, there're third-party cookies as well. These are cookies set by another website which you've not visited in your computer. Normally this will come from pop-ups and other banners.

Hope this helps...

Answer 3

Cookies are actually harmless text files that certain web sites will place onto the hard drive of your computer. Your Internet Browser will then load the information into memory while you are visiting their site. The Cookie itself, actually takes up very little space and acts as an identification card for the visiting site. You can compare this to visiting your favorite restaurant where your food server will usually remember certain aspects of how you like your food prepared and what you usually order. This information would obviously be based upon his familiarity of your prior visits. Well Cookies actually act in a similar manner and do not contain viruses as a virus must be executable file. Let us look at some of the ways that Cookies act as an identification card.

Why Sites Use Cookies?

There are numerous reasons why websites would want to use cookies. These range from statistical purposes, such as how many visitors came to the site. This can be further broken down into are they new visitors or actually repeating visitors and how often do they visit. The Website would actually create a unique id for each visitor and store this information into a database.

Cookies can be used to store your personal preferences, referred to as customizations, that you set while navigating their site. For instance, if you visit Yahoo.com, you can sign in to create your very own personal yahoo page where you can customize it according to your news and weather preferences after providing your zip code. You can even change the color of the page layout as well.

Online Shopping sites can use cookies to keep track of items that you add to their shopping carts and quick checkout options. The cookie will keep track of every item that you add to the shopping cart while you continue to browse through different pages or even entirely different sections of their site. Every item you add is stored within the Web site’s database along with a unique ID value that has been assigned to you. Therefore, when you select the check out option, the site automatically knows what items are in your cart by retrieving those selections from its database. This is why sites such as Amazon or eBay will prompt you to enable cookies in case you have disabled them.

Cookies also provide web designers and programmers with a quick and convenient method of keeping their site content fresh and up to date according to the interests of their users. Modern web servers use Cookies for back-end interaction as well, allowing them to securely store any personal data that the user has entered within a site. Therefore, on return visits the user now only has to enter partial information to access their account and purchases can be made quicker as their payment information is on file regarding their previous purchases.

In closing, as Cookies are actually small text files, they really can not damage your computer system or any files on your hard drive. Once again, they cannot transmit viruses as viruses are executable in nature. Some users may just not want to be tracked and this is one of the primary reasons why many people just disable accepting cookies.

Answer 4

Cookies are small files which automatically download to your temporary internet folder when you are surfing the internet. These files stores user specific information on computer which helps these sites to remember user preference when you visit next time.

Answer 5

cookies are biscuits/
small files usually for user recognition
if you want say yahoo account to auto sign in and you click that box, it plants a cookie on your pc. the next time you go to yahoo accounts, it checks for your cookie and uses it for identification
so that you don't have to sign in again
but sometimes they are a nuisance as they are for marketing purposes, ie planted to see how many times you go onto a particular site in a specified time
the next time you go on it, it checks for your cookie id and knows you have been on this site before
in some cases, is can be like spyware
it can have lots of popups and change your settings etc, although that would be rare in cases of cookies

Answer 6

i think that it's something that the cookie monster eats

Answer 7

http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/bulletins/i-034.shtml

try opening that site

it has everything you need to know about cookies

Answer 8

a snack or desert
for pleasure