What are cookies? My computer says it has detected cookies is this really bad?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

SIMPLE ANSWER> cookies can not hurt your computer, It doesn't matter what anyone tries to tell you, they can't. Some cookies can monitor your browsing habits, but in most cases cookies store information about sites. If sites have settings they save your settings. They can also tell a site when you visit. If you really don't trust them, just got to tools, internet options in IE, and delete cookies.

Answer 3

Cookies are little text notes that are sent by the web pages you visit, to your computer. They are used to track you browsing, so the server can see you preferences, and to be able to log on to the page quicker, if you want to re-visit later. Most cookies are harmless, but a few can be a bit invasive. You can safely remove cookies whenever you want. Just go to intenet options and remove them

Answer 4

No, it is not bad. Anytime you search the Internet you are going to collect cookies. They are simply files that hold information from the site you visited and actually will help the site load faster if you go back to that site.

Answer 5

nope. On the Internet or in a computer network, a file containing information about a user that is sent to the central computer each time a request is made. The server uses this information to customize data sent back to the user and to log the user’s requests.

Answer 6

Not necessarily bad. When you visit websites they place files into your temporary file folder to recognize you when you return or make the page load faster. But depending on your privacy settings cookies can be used to track your personal information and use it to sell to third parties to market their products to you without your consent.

Answer 7

cookies are when you go on a site it's a bookmark or a mark to let consumers know and you - where you've been with your IP ADDRESS. they also might come with dreaded spyware.- u got to clean up the registry and cache and cookie files. - ccleaner/ and spybot- search and destroy- are good programs- free! from downloads.com try them and see. you need to let certain amount of good cookies through to see certain sites, so, set your security settings to med for cookies.

Answer 8

instruction manual steps to erase your short-term information superhighway data. a million. end information superhighway Explorer, Firefox, or the different information superhighway browser 2. click commence, click "administration Panel", and then double-click "information superhighway strategies". 3. on the first tab, click "Delete data" under short-term information superhighway data. 4. in the Delete data communique field, click to opt for the "Delete all offline content cloth" examine field , and then click ok. 5. click ok.