Chances are you’ve been browsing the internet and you’ve seen a notification regarding cookies on your screen. Which tells you that this website uses cookies. Most of the time you just click that agree button. But you are here because you want to know what exactly are internet cookies and how website cookies work?

How cookies work?

We’re talking about website cookies. Which are more formally called HTTP cookies. A cookie is a small piece of information from a website, stored on a user’s computer. While the user is browsing the web. The cookies track a user’s browsing activity, for serving targeted information and advertisements. The targeted information may be ads for goods or services. For example, when you’re browsing Amazon, for a swimming costume for your daughter. You might see ads for more swimming costumes on Facebook later that day.

Cookies can also remember your login details for a specific website. Cookies are also used by website owners to know exactly how many unique visitors are visiting their website.

History of cookies

Now let’s talk about history of cookie. The first cookie was invented in way back 1994, by a 24-year-old programmer. Name of programmer was Lou Montulli, who was creating an online store for a company. The company said that their servers were getting too full, from storing each individual user’s shopping data. So, Lou was asked to figure out a way to store each user’s shopping cart data on their own computer. He came to know about an old computing token called the magic cookie. Lou then used this concept for website and created the modern-day cookie.

How website cookies work?

Cookies like old days, are still used to identify your computer. But now, they have some added functionalities too. Modern day cookies also track your activity.

Let’s for example, you visit an online store, for the first time. The website puts a cookie on your hard drive, that has its own unique identification code. This ID is then used to keep track of your session. The session means your overall visit to their website from start to finish. The reason it does this is to keep track of your activity. By doing this it suggests you similar items you may be interested in. It is helpful even if you close out of the website and come back.

Third Party cookies

Let’s now see another cookie called a third-party cookie. For example, let’s say that you’re browsing around a website. That has a button to like or share on Facebook. When you press this button, it talks to facebook.com. Which means that Facebook can now send their own cookies through this website, in order to track your activity. Also most likely serve up some targeted ads for you on your Facebook newsfeed. The cookie type being used here is the third-party cookie.

Hope this solves your basic queries regarding cookies. Please like and share the article and visit again for more.