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| Vol. 74, No. 2, February 2001
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Cookies – Ugly Monsters or Helpful Darlings?
What exactly
are cookies, and what do they do?
A cookie is a small bit of information a Web site places on your computer.
Cookies help identify you to the Web site and identify you the next time
you visit that Web site. They can store your user name and password for
a site, track purchases, record how many times you have seen a particular
banner advertisement, record the operating system software you use, record
the Web browser you use, the Internet address you are using, the last
Web site you visited, and other information.
Are cookies
similar to viruses?
No. Cookies are a line of text stored in a file generated by the Web
servers that your browser visits. Because cookies are text files, they
do not act like viruses on your computer and are not malicious, as viruses
can be.
Are cookies
useful?
Generally, yes. Cookies frequently are used for verification purposes.
For example, Amazon.com uses cookies to collect a visitor's email address,
password, purchase history, and full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream
to, through, and from its Web site, including date and time. The gathering
of some of this information (such as password and user identification)
allows visitors to return to a site multiple times without having to reenter
their personal data.
Can cookies
be deleted?
Yes. By default, most Internet browsers accept all cookies. You can change
your browser's security settings to accept all, reject all, or be prompted
whenever a cookie is encountered. Both Internet Explorer and Netscape
allow you to delete cookies, although these cookies are likely to be recreated
when you visit the Web site the next time. Several software programs allow
you to get more information on the cookies on your computer. The software
programs allow you to see the issuing site, expiration date, and other
details of cookies stored on your computer. The programs also let you
set filters for accepting or rejecting cookies from Internet sites.
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