what exactly are cookies, and should they be deleted?

Answer 1

cookies should be deleted. they are little fragments of files that you have opened and websites that you have visited that build up on your computer. you should delete them because over time they will slow down your computer.

Answer 2

Cookies are one of the most misunderstood of web elements. People confuse them with spam and spyware, and even those programs confuse cookies as such.

A cookie is simply a very small piece of data created by the server based on your preferences when you visit a website. It is not an executable program and it can not do or change anything on the individual's computer.

There are two basic types of cookies you will encounter on the web, session cookies and persistent cookies. They do basically the same thing, remember your information during your visit to a website, but have different purposes. A session cookie is placed on your computer to remember your visit and is erased when you leave the website. The server and browser have no memory of your visit if you visit again, another cookie will be placed on your computer temporarily.

Persistent Cookies do basically the same thing, except they are designed to last a short period of time on your computer so a cookie doesn't have to be placed on your computer each time you visit a website.

Cookies are very important in the realm of ecommerce. If your site does not use session cookies, products placed in a shopping cart program would be deleted and gone by the time the customer went to check out. Matter of fact, if someone is writing you telling you that they are unable to use your shopping cart or it isn't working because their items keep disappearing, 9 times out of 10, the problem is that the consumer has their browser set to reject all cookies. Asking your customer to check their browser settings and tell them to temporarily change them to "accept cookies" will usually do the trick.

Last but not least, be sure and state in your online privacy policy statement how you use cookies and if you use persistent cookies, how long they will last.

Answer 3

What Are Internet Cookies?

As Microsoft continues to release security patches to address various vulnerability within the Windows Operating System, accepting Cookies has become a public concern. As a result, many people are actually disabling their Internet Browsers from accepting cookies. Therefore, I decided to write a technical brief outlining what Cookies are so you can decide for yourself whether to accept them or not.


Cookies

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.


For The Latest Version of Internet Explorer

Click on the word Tools, which is contained in your top tool bar area.

This will pull down a menu for you to now click on Internet Options.

Then click on the Privacy tab located at the top of the options windows.

Then click on the Advanced tab to bring up the Advanced Privacy Settings windows.

This is the area where you can define how Cookies are handled on your system etc.

Answer 4

Websites like to store information about you i.e. your userid and/or other preferences with regard to their website. They are usually harmless and there's no need to delete them since they are not active and don't do anything -- they are not programs that can harm your computer.