A cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user’s computer by the user’s web browser while the user is browsing.
Cookies are files created by websites you visit. They make your online experience easier by saving browsing information. With cookies, sites can keep you signed in, remember your site preferences, and give you locally relevant content.
There are two types of cookies:
- First-party cookies are created by the site you visit. The site is shown in the address bar.
- Third-party cookies are created by other sites. These sites own some of the content, like ads or images, that you see on the webpage you visit.
A computer “cookie” is more formally known as an HTTP cookie, a web cookie, an Internet cookie or a browser cookie
The term “cookie” was coined by web-browser programmer Lou Montulli. It was derived from the term “magic cookie“, which is a packet of data a program receives and sends back unchanged, used by Unix programmers.
Why do we need Cookies
Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember stateful information (such as items added in the shopping cart in an online store) or to record the user’s browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or recording which pages were visited in the past). They can also be used to remember arbitrary pieces of information that the user previously entered into form fields such as names, addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers.
Are Internet cookies safe?
Usually, it’s safe to use cookies, as the data in a cookie doesn’t change when it travels back and forth.
However, some viruses and malware may be disguised as cookies.
How to enable, disable or manage cookies
Chrome
Firefox
Internet Explorer
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie
https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-privacy-what-are-cookies.html
