Cookies

Overview

"Cookies" are strings of information created and stored on your computer hard drive by web sites when you provide information to them. In general, cookies contain specific information that identifies you to web sites you access. Once cookies are created on your computer, web sites access them without your knowledge. Initially created as a "feature" to enhance web browsers, cookies gained notoriety when the threat they pose to individual privacy on the Internet became widely known.

Cookies Defined

Cookies are "a general mechanism which server side connections (such as web-based CGI scripts) can use to both store and retrieve information on the client (user) side of the connection" (according to Netscape). What this really means is that web browser technology incorporates a feature that allows web sites you visit to store information they gather about you on your hard drive in the form of a cookie. These cookies allow web sites to identify you when you return to them, and enable them to provide you with a customized "web experience." One way web sites use cookies is to customize your interface with them and allow you to specify the services those sites provide to you. The term "cookie" originated as a computer science term for a piece of data held by an intermediary.

How Cookies Work

When you visit a web site that uses cookies, that web site will automatically check your library of cookies to see if you've been to it before. If the web site finds a cookie it created earlier in that library, the web site uses the information in the cookie to identify you and "pick up where it left off" with you. If it does not find an existing cookie, the web site treats you as a first-time user and attempts to create a new cookie. Note that some web sites contain advertisements from other web sites. An ad from one of these second party web sites can place a cookie on your hard drive when you visit the site that hosts the ad.

Contents of Cookies

Cookies can be stored in individual files, as a single aggregate file, or in other combinations. Regardless of where they reside or what format they are stored in, cookies all contain an expiration date and name. Beyond that, information in each cookie is defined by the creator of the cookie, and conforms to compliance specifications for date and data formats. This information varies from site to site, and can be anything from plain text usernames and passwords to encrypted data used to facilitate a secure connection. Most cookies are less than 1K in size. Cookies contain only data and are not executable (program) files. Any server you visit can view any cookie on your computer, if it knows what to look for and how to interpret the data contained in a specific cookie.

Parts of a Cookie

There are three important parts to a cookie.
1.      Name - This is the data that the web server wants passed back to it when a browser requests another page
2.      Date - Determines how long the cookie stays on your system. If there is no expiration date, the cookie is stored in memory only and expires at when you close the web browser. If the Date specifies a particular date in the future, the cookie then stays on you computer and is saved in a file called temporary Internet files. Only the cookies that have a date can be used to track a user at more than one site.
3.      Domain Name - Contains the address of the server that sent the cookie and that will receive a copy of this cookie when the browser requests a file from that server.

User Control of Cookie Acceptance

Some web sites cannot interact with your browser if cookies are not enabled. Netscape and Internet Explorer, the two most common web browsers in use today, can be set to warn you before your browser accepts a cookie. Both offer the following options to control the introduction of cookies to your computer:
·        Accept all cookies
·        Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server
·        Disable cookies

Emptying the Cookie Jar

Cookies remain on your computer until they reach their expiration date. After that date, cookies are not passed on or stored by your browser. Cookies stored on your hard drive can be deleted prior to their expiration dates. When you delete valid cookies that have not expired, you start over with the web sites that generated them. Internet Explorer cookies are stored in a directory called "cookies", while Netscape stores to a file called cookies.txt.

Uses of Cookies

Internet Shopping

Internet shopping sites to keep track of you and your shopping cart uses cookies. When you first visit an Internet shopping site, you are sent a cookie containing the name (ID number) of a shopping cart. Each time you select an item to purchase, that item is added to the shopping cart. When you are done with your shopping, the checkout page lists all the items in the hopping cart tied to that cookie. Without cookies, you would have to keep track of all the items you want to buy and type them into the checkout page or buy each item, one at a time.

Custom Home Pages

Another use of cookies is to create customized home pages. A cookie is sent to your browser for each of the items you expect to see on your custom home page. Whenever you request your custom home page your cookies are sent along with the request to tell the server which items to display. Without cookies, a server would require you to identify yourself each time you visit the custom page so it knows what items to display. The server would also have to store the custom page settings for every visitor. What a custom home page means, is that the cookies identify the user and make that home page unique to the properties that are identified in the cookies.

Tracking Online Purchasing

Another use of cookies that is not so glamorous or highly looked upon is the tracking of consumers buying habits. The cookies can store information regarding what you the consumer buy, and what type of marketing to throw towards you. Some people feel that this information is too much information for people to find out.

Security Issues

Many people think that cookies invade your privacy and give out information about your computer. Although I ran across both sides of this debate, and some saying that you cookies cannot find out anything more than what your browser is capable of finding, and other sites saying that cookies can find out your email address and name and personal information like that.

If you are concerned about being identified or about having your web browsing traced through the use of a cookie, set your browser to not accept cookies or use one of the new cookie blocking packages. Note that blocking all cookies prevents some online services from working. Also, preventing your browser from accepting cookies does not make you an anonymous user; it just makes it more difficult to track your usage.

Because of the way that connections are made on the Internet, cookies will not automatically tell a Web site your name or address -- only that you, or someone using your computer, had visited the site before, along with whatever other information it wishes to maintain. However, it can store personal information if you voluntarily ''registered'' at the site by giving it your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address or any other personal information. From then on, all of your comings and goings will be recorded and linked to you, specifically -- even if on a subsequent visit you do not sign-in using your name. That information, in turn, could be sold to others, such as consumer marketing organizations (webnovice.com).

The user must be aware that some sites will not work unless cookies are enabled and active on your web browser.

Social Ramifications

The primary social ramifications of cookies are to personal privacy. There are two aspects of this:

Your individual cookies	Information about you contained in each cookie
The sum of your cookies	Information about your browsing habits determined by the aggregate of your cookies.

Your Individual Cookies

Each cookie on your computer contains some information about you. While most of this information is voluntarily provided by you during previous interactions with any given web site, it stays resident on your hard drive and can be accessed without your consent or knowledge once the cookie has been created. While much of this information is helpful and does optimize your browsing experience, over time and repeated interaction with a web site, the cumulative amount of information available about you can be significant. Even though information in cookies is intended to be used only by the domain creating them, it is transferred over the unsecure Internet on its way to that domain.

The Sum of Your Cookies

What do your browsing patterns reveal about you? One practice already in use uses cookies to determine your browsing patterns. This information is then used to target web based advertisements (pop up banners) based on what are perceived to be your interests and the web sites you're likely to visit. While some might welcome this, others are frustrated and even offended by the notion that their Internet points and clicks are being recorded. The fact this information is available to marketers means it's also available to groups which may have more malicious reasons for knowing you visit web sites consistent with your political beliefs or religious affiliations.