Cookie

Cookies were invented to enable the website’s server to keep track of a particular user’s activity within the site. Cookies technology allows the website’s server to place information about a user’s visits to the site on the user’s machine in a text file that only that website’s [[server] can read.

Using cookies, a website assigns each user a unique identifier (not the actual identity of the user), so that the user may be recognized in subsequent visits to that site. On each return visit, the site can call up user-specific information, which could include the user’s preferences or interests, as indicated by specific web pages or documents the user accessed in prior visits or items the user clicked on while in the site. An expiration date feature allows cookies to be set to remain on a user’s machine either permanently or for a specified length of time.

Cookies also vary in the extent of security they provide for the information they contain. Cookies can store information that facilitates the interaction between user and website.

As an example of how a permanent cookie functions, consider the online version of a newspaper. If a subscriber whose native language is Spanish informs the website that he prefers to download the Spanish edition of the newspaper, the newspaper can store that information in a cookie file on the user’s hard drive. When the subscriber next enters the newspaper’s website, the site retrieves the language preference information from the cookie and automatically sends the Spanish-language edition to the user. Temporary cookies can be created during online shopping expeditions. The cookies can tag the shopper’s intended purchases to facilitate the ordering process and then expire after a purchase is made.