What Are Cookies In Web Browsers

 There has recently been news about cookie tracking and legislation in the European Union that forces websites to explain their use of cookies to their visitors. If you are wondering what are cookies in a web browser? The following describes cookies.

What are Browser Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of information that websites store on your computer. Cookies only contain bits of text, nothing else. The text can be a user ID, session ID, or other text. For example, a web page can be configured, a web page can have hide links that hide certain elements on the page.

This page you are reading can save these settings on your computer with cookies. When you load the page again, the page may check for cookies and automatically hide the element. If you delete cookies, you will be logged out of all websites and the websites will not remember any settings that you have changed. Cookies are also very common, you probably have hundreds or even thousands stored in your browser right now.

History of Browser Cookies

Cookies were developed for the first time in 1994 by Lou Montulli, an employee of Netscape Communications. Together with John Giannandrea, Lou developed cookies as a solution to make e-commerce shopping carts possible. The real real world application of cookies on the web is to determine whether a visitor to a Netscape website has been there before.

Initially cookies were accepted by default by all supported browsers and very few end users had any idea of their existence or use. That all changed in February 1996 when the Financial Times published a section detailing its existence, purpose and use. What followed was intense media scrutiny over the next few years because of the privacy risks attached to visitor tracking.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has been tasked with developing an official cookie specification that addresses the concerns raised by the media. Of particular concern are the risks associated with allowing third-party cookies. These are better known as tracking cookies. The IETF seeks to require that third-party cookies be explicitly prohibited or only permitted after a user has explicitly opted-in.

However, the leading browser developers at the time, Netscape and Microsoft, ignored IETF recommendations and followed online advertisers' wishes to allow third-party tracking cookies. The current cookie specification acknowledges the use of third-party cookies and the risks attached to their use, but ultimately places the onus for addressing these risks back on browser developers:

This document gives user agents (browsers) broad latitude for experimenting with third-party cookie policies that balance their users' privacy and compatibility needs.

How Browser Cookies Work

Your web browser stores and manages cookies. You can find a list of websites that store cookies and view the cookies themselves, although it's usually not interesting to view the contents of the cookies, in your browser settings. If you use multiple web browsers on your computer, each browser has its own cookies. Websites are only allowed to view their own cookies, for example, when you visit the Schemafix website, Admin cannot check cookies from other websites. This is to prevent malicious websites from snooping and stealing your login session.

Advantages of Cookies

1. Helping websites to "remember" who we are and set preferences accordingly. So that when the user returns to visit the website it will be immediately recognized.

2. Cookies eliminate the need to re-register on the website you visit and when you access the website again.

3. Cookies can be especially useful on sites that require registration, so that every time we log in to the site, cookies will create a user login automatically without having to enter a username and password again.

4. Occupies little memory, does not require server resources and is stored on the user's computer so that there is no additional load on the server.

5. We can configure cookies to expire when the browser session ends (session cookies) or they can exist for a certain period of time on the client computer (persistent cookies).

6. Cookies last a longer period of time than State Sessions.

Lack of Cookies

1. Cookies are not as safe as those stored in text form, because they can pose a security risk that allows some people to open and change their cookie settings

2. Cookies will not work if the security level is set to high in the browser.

3. Users can delete cookies.

4. The user's browser may reject cookies, so your code should anticipate that possibility.

5. Complex data types are not allowed (eg dataset, etc.). It allows only plain text (ie Cookies allows only String content).

6. Slows down the performance of the web server in loading websites. This is due to the additional javascript scripts and links that point outside the website. Automatically it will slow down the website loading process.

Conclusion

So what are cookies in a web browser? Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored as text files in the browser. Websites use those tiny bits of data to track users and enable user-specific features.

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Resa Risyan

Just an ordinary person who wants to share a little knowledge, hopefully the knowledge I provide can be useful for all of us. Keep in mind! Useful knowledge is an investment in the afterlife.