Cookies

Cookies are bits of encrypted information deposited by some Web sites on a computer's hard drive after a person has accessed a particular site.

Cookies were originally created as a tool to save time and allow for the personalization of sites, by enabling users to be treated differently from one another and according to specific preferences chosen by the users, rather than by programmers. The Web site stores cookies, so that when the same site is accessed again from the same computer, the site can recognize the computer and provide the same set of personalized settings and information—layout, shopping cart, search information, or user's name—each time the site is visited. Unless a computer is specifically told not to accept a cookie, when the site is accessed again, the Web browser automatically sends the cookie back to the Web site from which it came.

When a surfer visits a Web site, a few key broad identification points about the surfer are immediately available. The site can identify the URL from which the surfer came, the Internet domain name or IP address of the computer the surfer used, and which browser the surfer used. Cookies build on this initial knowledge, permitting sites to gather more details, not just about the computer accessing the site, but also about the person using the computer.

The cookie as we know it today was created by Netscape in 1994 as a special feature of the Netscape browser, for the purpose of maintaining site information on a computer even after the computer has been shut down. The original intention of the cookie was to make life easier for the person browsing the Web. The concept is somewhat similar to that of a computer's preferences file; it keeps track of how the user wants a site to look or function, and once the preferences are set, the user does not have to re-input routine information upon each visit. No one took much notice of cookies until Netscape released its second version: Netscape Navigator 2.0 featured a new option that could turn off cookies completely.

Conflicting stories exist about the origin of the term cookie. According to Chris Sherman of http://About.com, many computer users believe cookie comes from the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, who leave a trail of cookies to find their way out of the forest. Although Sherman acknowledges that in the story the children supposedly dropped rocks along their path to mark their way, the idea of cookies to mark a path stuck with the Web usage. Access Vanguard's Web site argues that cookie seems to apply because of the Internet programming tendency to name functions after food, as in the case of spam or Java. Netscape has claimed the bits of encrypted information are called cookies “for no compelling reason.”

Web browsers limit the number of cookies that a user's computer can store at any given time. Default browser settings allow about 300 cookies, or 20 per server or domain. When these limits are reached, the least used or oldest cookies are deleted. Cookies are also kept to a 4 Kb limit of space used on the computer's hard drive.

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