Mouse Clix
Got Cookies?
In cannot tell you how many times I have been asked
about Cookies. What are they, what do
they do, and are they bad for you?
Well, it is like a baked cookie.
Most of the time, they are harmless.
There are two different cookies that have to do with
computers. The one most people ask
about are the cookies that you may be “given” by a web site. A cookie is a small line of code that a
website can put in your hard drive while you are visiting there. One purpose is to identify you when you
return to the site. Often this means
that they can save you time entering a user name and password as that info is
in the cookie. It also means that you
get that little surprise greeting, such as “Welcome back Hobie.” They know you are back because of the
cookie.
Typically, a cookie records your preferences when
using a particular web site. Using the
Internet's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), each request that you make for a
web page is independent of every other request. For this reason, the web page server (the computer system where
the requested information is stored) has no memory of pages that it has
previously sent to a user or anything about their previous visits, if any, without
the utilization of cookie technology
Cookies are most commonly used to alternate the advertising that a web
site sends to you, so that it does not keep sending the same ads repeatedly as
you receive a succession of requested pages.
Cookies can also be used to customize requested pages based on your
browser type, video characteristics, or other information that you may have
provided to that web site. Web users
must agree, in their browser setup or manually depending on their system
settings, to let cookies be saved for them on their hard disk drive.
As a rule, cookies help web sites to serve their users better and more
quickly. On all web sites and web
pages, there is no personally identifiable information conveyed in a
cookie. There is nothing transmitted to
which you have not consented, and there is never any information externally
aggregated or exchanged.
Cookies do not read your hard drive and send your life story to the
CIA. A cookie, however, can be used to
gather more information about a user than would be generally possible without
utilizing them. Keep in mind; you
control the information and the acceptance of cookies.
Depending upon how sophisticated the website is,
they could possibly track where you go within their site. Can they see where else you go on the
Internet? Maybe.
Is this important?
Well, for people who value their privacy to a very high degree, this may
be very important. Personally, this
stuff does not bother me, I have been surfing for half dozen or more years and
I am sure I have been tracked from time to time. In one instance, I was given a $25.00 Savings Bond by Yahoo to
let them track my surfing for several weeks.
If they discover that I like a certain something on the Internet and
they want me to see more of whatever that is, it is more of a benefit than a
hindrance.
If you would prefer NOT to get cookies, here is what
you can do. First and easiest is (while
you are on-line) go to Tools, and click on Internet Options. Click the Security tab, and then click the
button Security Level. Scroll down until
you see the selections for cookies.
There are several areas of selection.
The first is for cookies that are permanently inserted in your hard
drive and the second for those that will only be there for the present session
and will not be there the next time you come on-line. The selections are Disable, Enable and Prompt. Disable means you don’t want the cookies,
Enable means you do and Prompt means you want to be asked each time cookies are
about to enter your hard drive so you can accept them on a one by one
basis. Make your choices and click on
OK.
What to do about all the cookies you already
have. Go to Start and Find and enter
the word cookies and click search (the computer). After the search, the cookie folder will probably be the first on
the list. Click on it to see the list
of cookies. You will learn that they
come from a large number of sites and you will be able to identify which places
are the sources of many of the cookies.
To delete them all, click on the uppermost one, then click on Edit and
Select All. Then click File and
Delete. The program will delete all
except the folder itself and it will tell you that you cannot delete it.
If you have had the cookies working for you for a
while and then you eliminate them, you will notice some minor changes in the
way things happen. You may have to
enter your user name and password a little more frequently as some sites will
no longer recognize you.
For more information on cookies, go to your favorite
search engine and enter “cookies defined” (include the quotes). You will get a list of up to 100 sites that
have information about them and many good reasons not to disable them
I hope that will be helpful. I just want to touch on another use of the
word cookie before I leave the subject.
Inside a Floppy drive or a Zip drive there is a little disk often made
of a plastic material that will save your data in magnetic form so that you can
read it again later. These little disks
are called cookies.
Got cookies?
It is your choice.
Hobie Lunin is a consultant and instructor and can
be reached at mouseclix2@yahoo.com.
Previous articles are at http://mouseclix.tripod.com.