Beginning ideas about cookies.
Here’s my understanding about cookies:
Cookies are bits of information stored on one’s browser. When you visit a site, that site may store one or more cookies on the browser. Then, when you return later, that same site can retrieve that information.
Cookies can be retrieved to help the browser reload the page in the state you seemed to want it. They can also store information you entered on the site, such as a username and/or password. That way, as one navigates pages of the same site, one needn’t keep signing in each time.
A third party advertiser on a site the browser visits may also be able to store a cookie on that browser. However, to my knowledge, a site can only recall its own cookies, not ones from other sites.
Tracking cookies, as they are called, are used to find out other sites a browser visited. However, because a site can only recall its own cookies from the browser, tracking cookies only work when there is common ownership among the sites somehow. That could happen, for instance, if the same advertiser has ads on several sites the browser visits. In such a case, that advertiser might be able to retrieve cookies it put from all those sites, therefore realizing that browser visited them all.
Cookies likely aren’t that much of a menace, but things can get a bit overdone sometimes, just on principle. I recall, with one cookie permission, a site mentioning its 841 partners would be sharing information based on cookies that would be placed on my browser. Seriously?
Source:
YouTube: Ask Leo! “What Are Tracking Cookies, and Should They Concern Me?”
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