Cookies - Information that websites store on your computer (2024)

FAQs

Cookies - Information that websites store on your computer? ›

Computer cookies are small files, often including unique identifiers, that web servers send to browsers. These cookies can be sent back to the server each time your browser requests a new page from that website. This allows the website to recognize your computer and retrieve the stored information about you.

Cookies can store a wide range of information, including personally identifiable information (such as your name, home address, email address, or telephone number).

Cookies contain information such as pages visited on a website, items in the shopping cart, login details, search history and language preferences. They can also collect personally identifiable information such as name, email address, phone number and other personal data that users enter through website forms.

Cookies get created when you visit a website. These text files identify you and help streamline your online experience. Once created, cookies are stored in a file on your hard drive or browser, depending on your operating system and the browser you use.

Cookies track and store personal information about the user, which websites can use in the future. They store data such as name, residential address, email address, and phone number.

Remember, cookies contain your information, including what sites you browse, what products you clicked on, where you're located, and even login information. By not accepting cookies, you eliminate the chance a hacker could hijack your cookies and use the data inside to access sites while pretending to be you.

At its worst, third-party cookies can store your email and name, allowing websites to give your contact information to parties that can send you spam.

Over time, tracking cookies can collect a lot of personal information and behavioural data — they can learn about your location, device information, purchase history, search queries, and much more. Since advertisers can easily gather basic data without users even consenting to it, tracking cookies have a bad rap.

A website can track which of its own webpages a user has visited, which probably isn't too surprising. However, a website can also track a user's browsing history across other websites by using third-party cookies, as long as each site loads the cookie from the same domain.

While tracking cookies raise some privacy concerns, we wouldn't call them spyware, because unlike spyware, they don't operate secretively, damage your computer, or are hard to stop. In fact, you can stop tracking by deleting these cookies or disabling third-party cookies in your browser.

What happens if you don't accept cookies? ›

What happens if you don't accept cookies? – The potential problem with refusing to accept cookies is that some website owners may not allow you to use their websites if you don't accept their cookies. Another downside is that without acceptance, you may not receive the full user experience on certain websites.

For Google Chrome go to View > Developer > Developer Tools or CMD + ALT + I on Mac or F12 on Windows. ‍Next, open the Application tab and check the cookies for each domain. Usually the cookies have names that resemble the name of the service they are being used by.

Cookies are small text files that your website stores in your visitor's browser. These files typically contain information about your visitor's preferred language settings or location, but can store a wide range of information including personally identifiable information.

Because tracking cookies are mostly used by companies that want to market their products or services to you, they primarily store information about your online browsing activity, including: Sites and pages you've visited. Products you might have clicked on. Online purchases you've made.

You are correct, yes, you can read the cookies' contents, because it's your computer. But that doesn't mean that the browser will let any website read them. So, those are two different things.

If a company uses cookies to target advertising, it can also use the information stored in them for this purpose. Companies often ask for cookie consent because they need your permission to place these files on your device to function properly when visiting their websites (and others).

Internet cookies can identify or single out individuals and are considered personal data under laws like the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), the ePrivacy Directive (EU Cookie Law), and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

If the website doesn't set the expiry date, the browser will delete the cookie once it's closed. The average lifetime of a cookie is about 30 days, but cookies can also be set to last for over a year.

Cookies are files created by sites you visit. They make your online experience easier by saving browsing data. The cache remembers parts of pages, like images, to help them open faster during your next visit.

While individual cookies are small, usually much less than a MB (megabyte) each, they can eat up a surprisingly large amount of space on your computer as virtually every website uses them. Clearing cookies will let you free up space on your hard drive and improve your computer's speed.