What are and what are browser cookies

The term cookies has become something of the most common. Currently, when we enter a website we get a warning about the use of cookies on that website. Generally they ask us to accept that the web uses our cookies. So it is a term that we see almost daily. Although many users do not really know what they are.

What are your browser cookies and what are they for?

The notice that tells us that they are stored in our browser has become part of our day to day. It also doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon. So we have to get used to this word. Because you are not going anywhere. What are cookies really? What are they for?

These are two issues that most users have. That is what we are going to answer next. We will explain what they are and what they are for. In this way, we can become even more familiar with this term that is already part of our daily life.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a file that a website creates and that contains small amounts of data. Data that is sent between sender and receiver. In the case of the Internet, the sender is the server on which a website is hosted. While the receiver is the browser that the user uses to visit web pages. The main objective of cookies is to identify the user by storing their activity history on a website.

In this way, you will be able to offer content appropriate to your habits. This means that the first time a user visits a web page, a cookie will be saved in the browser with information. When the user revisits the same website at some point in the future, the server will request this cookie. In this way, the site can be configured and the user's visit is more personalized.

The purpose of a cookie is also to know when the last time a user visited a certain website. Or to save the items that the user put in the shopping cart in a store on the net. These data are being stored.

So we can see that cookies serve to store information about users. Partly so that when we browse a website, this action is as comfortable and customizable as possible. But, it is also in the interest of the websites to be able to have information about the actions that we carry out online.

Types of cookies

There are different types of cookies today. The most common are the so-called session cookies, whose life time is very short, since they are eliminated when you close the browser. So they barely exist for a few hours. Another type are the so-called persistent cookies, which are those that are used to track the user. So they keep information about the use you make of the Internet and its behavior on a specific web page. This type of cookie can be eliminated if we clean the browser data. Something that is recommended to do with some frequency.

We also have secure cookies, which are those that store encrypted information to prevent the data that has been stored from being vulnerable to attacks by third parties. This type is used only on secure connections (HTTPS).

On the other hand, we also have so-called zombie cookies. This guy is very interesting because they recreate themselves once they have been erased. In other words, the browser has no control over them. They will continue to be generated even if we close the browser or clean the browser. This type of cookie is saved on the device and not in the browser. The idea is that they can be accessed regardless of the type of browser we use. Although this is what supposes that they are a danger for the security and privacy of the users. In fact, they are often used for malicious purposes.

As you can see, there are quite a few different types of cookies. Each of these types has a different purpose, although they all meet the basic characteristics of this term, which is to store information about user behavior on a website. We hope that this article has been useful to you in order to better understand what cookies are and how useful they are. What do you think about the purpose of a cookie?