What are cookies and their significance?

As you know, we keep seeing the same data while traveling and relevant ads on the pages that we land via search engines. It is all possible because of a cookie file so during this blog, you will learn what are Cookies and their significance.

There has been a lot of things being discussed on forums about how a search engine and other platforms track my searched query or my location so easily while I am traveling or gone somewhere.

What are cookies and their significance?

Cookies are small text files that get stored in your system when you visit a website so whenever you surf again on the internet, you get to see the same ads or anything that you left off in between.

Cookies can help site track how much you have surfed on the internet and keeps you logged in unless you cleared them from your browser completely.

Whenever you have open any website, you may have noticed the page of the website’s cookie policy and privacy policy as to how do they use it for advertising purposes or anything that they cover in their cookie policy.

Their purpose is very much specified and on some sites, you also get a popup to accept their privacy or cookie policy after your land on the homepage of the website.

Cookie gets stored on your computer’s browser and whenever you log in to the same website, it lets you log in again by verifying credentials easily as cookies stored in your system.

Significance of an Internet cookie

Cookie was basically developed to prevent the same operation to perform again and again for eg., login as it helps you to send the information that was tracked to a webserver.

Let’s take an example of Google email or Google. Here, whenever you try to sign up, you allow Google to use your device cookie to remembers location, recent search, and relevant information with a single click.

After that, whenever you need to see the result of any query that you run on google search engine meaning – if you search for baseball on Google then only those results will be displayed on the search results that you had seen last time.

A cookie can potentially track your information and display all relevant information that you may need.

It can literally help you of being remembered on the webserver as it supplies information to the server and uses it to display only familiar or relevant details.

A cookie that is stored in your mobile device automatically changes the location to your present location because it uses your permission that was given while installing the app after the download.

Significance of cookies on the Social networking site

Earlier, a cookie file was created only to remember your login and some information but as the technology evolved and so the digital platforms. A cookie is a unique identifying file that now, is used for many reasons.

It not only remembers your location, weather, time, and other relevant information but also uses to remember user behavior such as login, your site session time, searches, etc.

Online shopping portals and social networking sites are nowadays connected with each other. As you know, we spent maximum time on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Advertisers use our cookie information to track our behavior or search query online then accordingly, show the similar search-based ads that you had searched earlier.

It is now a regular practice to make a sale, for eg, if you have searched something on Amazon.com and kept it in your cart but did not check out.

So, the cookie file will share the information with amazon and you will keep getting popups and notification until you buy the product that was added to the cart. You might have noticed this, didn’t you?

While obtaining any information or seeing what others are updating, you often get to see ads being displayed on their pages either on sidebars or corner of the page.

When you click on it, you are taken on their site where they have displayed or advertised their product information. That time, a cookie of that site needs to be accepted separately.

Let’s say, you landed on eBay site from Facebook if they are mapped with each other then it’s fine if not, then you will see the notification with the options like Accept or decline.

If you cancel the notification box then the site will assume that you had allowed them to use your cookie file as per their policy.

The social networking site also uses a cookie file to show you relevant ads and the next time, you log in, you will see similar ads as per your behavior.

Pros and Cons of the Internet Cookie file

Pros

Cookies can help you get to the information without looking for it again and again even after you log off and come back online.

It can help you in various ways such as it keeps you logged in, your location is automatically updated, you can view your settings.

You can even modify by doing the cookie settings.

• You can block third party sites to display ads.
• You can block pop up ads from an unknown source
• you can check or uncheck whether you want to let shopping sites to remember your search for products and keep you remembered.
• You can block the third party sites even in Incognito mode.

Cons

Cookie files are a threat to privacy and it sometimes becomes a problem as they might share the information to those websites where you don’t want our details to be shared.

So here, the question of information compromised arises. It is you who allows the app of a site or a portal to supply our information so that we can use the site or an app easily.

It is completely up to you whether you want to allow or disallow as you have the option to modify the cookie settings however there are sites who don’t continue at all if we decline the request of using our cookie file in their sites.

I hope, you have understood about cookies and their significance in the internet world.