Demystifying website cookies

You must have encountered a small dialog box that pops-up with the word “cookies” every time you visit a site while browsing the Internet. Well, it actually does not refer to those delicious mouth-watering cookies. These are the small files placed on the website by browser directory.

Cookies are tiny text files stored on one’s computer, smartphone or otherwise. They are synonymous with browsers and used to identify and differentiate one user from the other through strings of data collection. They are retrieved next time you visit the site or load another page on the site. These cookies can be from the site, or from third parties such as advertising networks.

Functionality of cookies
An HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) cookie also called (web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small piece of data stored on the user’s computer by the web browser while browsing a particular website.
Let’s say, while shopping on an e-commerce website, you enter your personal details (KYC-Know your Customer) that includes your banking details, contact number, among others, to make payments. Ever wondered why those same details appear automatically the next time you visit the site? It is because of cookies!

Cookies were designed to be a mechanism for websites to remember particular information (such as items added in the shopping cart in an online store) or to record the user’s browsing activity including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or recording which pages were visited in the past. They can also be used to remember pieces of information that the user previously entered into from fields, such as names, addresses, passwords, and payment card numbers.

Technically, many websites use cookies for their core processes. Experts believe cookies enable smoother, more efficient site use by visitors by storing your site-specific information and preferences such as theme, language setting, privacy preferences, and even user ID and password, so you don’t need to re-enter those each time you visit a new page, or leave and return to the site.

How does it help advertisers?
In simple terms, advertisers pay for the majority of the content people freely access on the Internet, that is very similar to television commercials paying for most broadcast content.
Given that adverts are an established factor of online life, if you have just searched for flight tickets online, wouldn’t you see potentially useful adverts for flight tickets or airlines, rather than adverts for, say, wood furniture?
Cookies, on the other hand, help advertisers format adverts on your computer or mobile device to improve ad cost efficiency, attribute user engagement and customise offers based on your browsing and search history.

Cookies, an intruder?
Since, cookies help advertisers and third-party gain most of our personal information, some believe it to be objectionable, intrusive, or verging on cyber-stalking.
Few cookies use include, selling users’ online profiles to identify target market or some cyber stalkers can directly access your browsing session.
Although, cookies have some important implications on the privacy and anonymity of web users. As described above cookies collect quite an amount of data of the users and this data is usually shared with other service providers. Speaking to Prosper, Mr Noah Baalessanvu, head of Technology at Crypto Savannah says, “Cookies are designed to make web experience smooth and user friendly, but given that this data can be shared with other third parties as it collects personally identifiable data, they present privacy and safety risks.”

However, few among other experts suggest not all cookies are harmful.
Speaking to Prosper magazine, Mr Remmegious Ssewankambo, senior executive director at Techjaja says, “It depends on what type of cookie and the length at which the user has consented to it in terms of data collection. Some are good for security, improving the user experience, storing passwords among others.”

Can one avoid cookies?
According to Mr Ssewankambo some cookies come inbuilt in websites especially first-party ones. So, it is hard to avoid them, given the websites normally require one to consent to them before reading their content.
“It is difficult to avoid them. Many websites collect data of their visitors and use this data to better serve the visitors better. That said, there are regulations today that restrict how this collected data is shared and websites need to inform visitors about cookies and they must give their consent,” says Mr Baalessanvu.
However, he says, one can alternatively navigate the browser settings under privacy and security and turn off any cookies of their dislike or check terms and conditions and only consent to items they are comfortable with at the time of installation.