What Is: Cookies?

[soleimanian 0]

Some Web sites store information in a small text file on your computer. This file is called a cookie.

 

There are several types of cookies, and you can choose whether to allow some, none, or all of them to be saved on your computer. If you do not allow cookies at all, you may not be able to view some Web sites or take advantage of customization features (such as local news and weather, or stock quotes).

[jcguy 0]

Cookies are rather controversial objects because of concerns of privacy. Cookies can be used to track your activities online, and some people hate this form of instrusion on their privacy. For example, site can show adverts to you based on the types of sites you visit using cookies.But then again, without the important role cookies play in serving ads, advertisers would not be spending, websites would have no money, and the web will be a less enjoyable place. Don't you think so?

[Hercco 0]

I'm not a huge fan of cookies... if rightly used they're ok. But for advertising and profiling purposes I kinda feel my privacy intervened. If you guys ever use cookies on your site, at least inform the users of it. And preferably give them the opinion to not to use cookies, othe than banning them from the browser settings. Worst of all are sites that refuse to work without cookies.

[jcguy 0]

In fact I think this IPB forum board uses cookies too, although I can't be sure. Cookies can be very usful, but they are sometimes abused.And I wonder who came up with the name 'cookies'?

[xavierduan 0]

nearly all program with members management use cookies,it is a good way to check online users, and now cookies is widely use by developers.

[Darren1405241470 0]

While i agree that cookies are good if used in the correct way i dont think there is any need for most sites to use them. BTW-the person who came up with "cookies" is probably the same skinny little guy who first said "You see that cow over there, I'm going to squeeze the little pink things under it and drink whatever comes out".

[chickenside 0]

Meh. No matter what way you slice it, I don't like cookies. Cookies are bad, very bad things, that I find terribly intrusive and invasive if abused.

[currahee 0]

Cookies are OK for things like remembering your password in forums and stuff. But when its used to intrude your privacy... that's when you start saying "NO" to them. But then again its rather annoying having to type in your username and password all the time.

[Garthnak 0]

Cookies are useful tools for web developers to provide useful site functionality to their users with. It is a way to store information easily for a particular client so that you can retrieve it later. Yes, it also means that advertising companies may be able to track your activity online - but they can still do that WITHOUT cookies by looking at your IP address (and possibly other information you send them). It may not be as reliable as cookies are for tracking purposes, but it can be almost as effective and just as much a privacy concern.My suggestion is to limit the amount of information you wish to be "private" up on the public Internet, unless you encrypt it with something like PGP or GnuPG. Heck, this very forum site stores FIVE cookies all by itself. You're taking a chance with your privacy just by posting here. Personally, that doesn't really bother me.

[honeycomb 0]

cookie is small piece of information stored in your computer. it named xxx.txt, you can find in "your work directry"/cookies/, some web site will write cookie to your harddisk when you visit a web site, so the site can remember you, your name or other things. cookies can only be read by website that write the cookie.

[honeycomb 0]

nearly all program with members management use cookies,

it is a good way to check online users, and now cookies is widely use by developers.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

many years ago when I use perl and php, I prefer use cookies, but now, I use jsp and asp.net, it have session, so session used more than cookies.

use cookie have a problem, if someone forbid using cookies, you can not get user infomation.

[Hercco 0]

If you don't like every site setting cookies to your computer, like I don't , check your browsers cookie settings. For example in Mozilla Firefox you can select that browser asks everytime when a site want to set a cookie. If you feel the cookie is OK then just select "Use my choice for all cookies from this site" and hit accept. If the cookie is from domain like ads.something.com, then I usually select "use my choice..." and hit deny. No more cookies from that advertiser. This, of course, slows the browsing a bit as you have to go through this everytime you go to a new site which is about to set a cookie, but personally I feel it is worth it.In addition to Mozilla, Opera and Netscape have similar features and also some firewalls have abilities to block cookies from certain domains.

[kraizii88z 0]

The only place i use cookies on my website is using the statcounter & the users online script. i don't think they're too intrusive but sites shouldn't rely on them.

[chronogamer28 0]

I usually use cookies to keep like login information intact so I don't have to keep logging into a website whenever I go there. However, if you feel that cookies are invading your privacy, Ad-Aware 6.0 addresses that problem. It targets invididual files that it thinks is spyware (i.e. cookies, files, registry values) Good program to look into.

http://www.lavasoft.com/

[KyoNiwa 0]

Is it bad to erase the cookies every now and then? Or should I not clear them? Are spyware and adware cookies too? Do they have Spybot and ad-aware for the Macs? I cant find them for mac... do macs get Them?