Remember the last two week's poll "What Is A Cookie"? Actually, not much blog visitors knows about the cookie or may be too much of visitors thought it is just a piece of sweet biscuit but obviously, since this blog is talking about online privacy, the cookie we talk at here is the web browser cookie. So, what is the cookie? Who "bake" the cookie?
In most of the computers, once they connect to the Internet, there are not only one cookie. It is a lot of cookies stored inside your computer if you surf the Internet frequently and visit different web sites. Basically, Cookies are those small file size text which contain the information such as identity, your name, your interests, users ID and others inside your computer. The servers "bake" the cookies and store inside your computer if your browsers did not disable the cookies. These cookies store inside your browsers therefore, the browsers send cookies to the web site's server and the server could identify you.
For example, blogger.com requires Javascript and cookies because it needs cookies to identify which user are you, your name and other log in information to let you do change of setting or make changes of posts. If your browser has disable the cookies, when you log in to blogger.com it would show message like this:
On the other hand, cookies can be harmless because they are text files with bits information only but some arguments said that cookies ease to track people. Let's analyze it briefly. Since cookies store your identity, it is possible cookies could reveal your information easily to third party then, you would no have online privacy? What are the truths? All these would be discussed on the next time.
Remember, web browser cookies are not those biscuits that we eat.
Reference:
What Is An Internet Cookie?, HowStuffWorks.com [Online]
Retrieved on 4th February 2010
