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Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! Are you guys enjoy eating the Chinese New Year cookies? Now I am continue with my discussion on cookies, but not that cookies you guys eating. The cookies are the browser cookies or the cookies save inside your browser. If you want to know what are the cookies, you could refer to our old post 'Cookie? Biscuit?'. It tells what are the cookies in cyber world.
Let's start with something quite boring first - the history of browser cookies. Do not worry, it is just a brief history on cookies. Actually, the browser cookies are invented by Netscape Communication in 1994. Cookies also known as 'magic cookies' but nowadays, we keep it short therefore, we just call them 'cookies'.
Next, some arguments stated that browser cookies are harmless because they are just a text file without exceed 4kb and they are not virus or spy ware and they do not even store any viruses and spy wares. There are two types of cookies, one is session cookie which is temporary save inside your browser. When you turn off your computer, those session cookies are bye bye (disappear)! The other one is persistent cookie which can save until one month and even years. We do not care which type of cookies and their differences, they could be privacy risk to Internet users because cookies could be used to track an user's online shopping habits, browse the web sites habit and others.
Cookies are specialized to keep information for online shopping sites such as 'shopping basket', personalize web sites, and give information on how users use the web sites to the web owners or servers. They could be a big risk to online shoppers because when they shop through online, they do not have any privacy actually. It is all because the online shopping site's server could track their purchase habits and their browse habits. Would you feel comfortable when someone is tracking you when you do your shopping either online or outlet. Since cookies are invented to keep information on your shopping basket therefore, the web servers could retrieved the items you have saved inside the shopping basket. If other people hack into your browser cookies, they might know what you have purchased and even what sites you have visited. If you buy a lingerie to your girl friend, they might know too.
On the other hand, cookies can affect your online privacy especially to those online shoppers, their online shopping histories might be tracked but users could always protect them by disabling the browser cookies. This can be done inside the browser setting. Some users disable all the cookies from all the web sites, deny some of the cookies from certain web sites, or enable all the cookies but some web sites require cookies otherwise they would not perform well. Sometimes it is very hard to avoid browser cookies for certain web sites like Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) because it needs cookies to help you personalize or modify your blog. Believe or not? Cookies enables tracking and stalking through the Internet, through your browser.
References:
Primary Search
1. Grey Elmer, (2002). Critical Perspectives on the Internet, Rowman & Littlefield Publisher, Inc., United Kingdom.
2. Mark Ciampa (2009). Security + Guide to Network Security, Course Technology, Cengage Learning, Boston, USA.
