Cookies Are Our Friends...

Cookies Are Harmless

Rest assured, despite what you've heard about "tracking cookies" or other tales of how you can be harmed or violated by cookies, they are actually not in any way a real security risk to Internet users. There is a major misconception about cookies, who can use them, how & when they can be used, and what data they can collect. Even cookies branded as "data miners" that "track web usage data" are not nearly as bad as they're often made out to be. For your protection, cookies are not human-readable and can only be read by the web server that sets it - and only while you are actually loading content from that website. They can never contain personally identifying information unless you have provided it to the website and the website places it in a cookie in order to provide a personalized experience while you're on their site. Cookies contain ZERO executable code whatsoever and can't search your computer for financial data while you're asleep or be used for anything other than providing the website that created the cookie with data that website generated and placed into that cookie...

Types of Cookies

There are two types of cookies. The first type is a first-party cookie. This type of cookie is set by the actual website you're visiting. These cookies can store information used to properly display the website, as well as any user-specific information generated based your browser capabilities and/or information you've provided to the website. 1st-party cookies that track usage data will only keep track of your activity on their website, and again, only while you're on their website. The data is usually used in their efforts to keep their websites fresh with content that users want to visit (or with products that users are actually interested in).

The second type is a third-party cookie. These cookies are usually set when you visit a website that displays advertisements or other content within their pages that is served by another web server. They are read any time you visit a website that displays content from that server. Just like 1st-party cookies, these can only be read by the server that sets it. Such cookies are generally used to collect demographic information about how their content is displayed. Again, these cookies never contain any personally identifiable information unless you willingly provide it to the server that sets the cookie.

The closest thing to personally identifying information that can be stored in a cookie without your knowledge is your IP address. However, even if you don't allow cookies, a website can still get your IP address because any time you do anything on the internet, your computer sends this info as an automatic and necessary part of the communication. Without it, the web server will not know where to send responses to your HTTP requests.

The main security threat to people through normal web surfing is malicious websites that use Java and similar plugins that can automatically download, install and execute applications without your permission by exploiting security holes (usually in Internet Explorer). For the most part, this can be solved by not visiting questionable websites and by keeping your system current on security updates. Cookies by themselves are no threat to anyone and are an important behind-the-scenes part of how just about any good website functions.