Computer Column: Cookies

What are they? How do you get them? Does your computer eat them? Our computer guru breaks it down:

By Bruce Richardson

In my last article, I gave some tips on speeding up your computer.  So (NCN editor Tom Scanlon) wanted to know why I didn’t say anything about deleting cookies off the hard drive.  

While there are a bunch of other things you can do to speed up your computer, I wouldn’t put cookie deletion on the top of the list.  Cookies are misunderstood and much maligned.  

As a user, Tom deletes his cookies to gain disk space and speed up his computer. As a web designer, I want you to keep the cookies that go with my websites.

I will explain just what a cookie is then let you make your own decision.

A cookie is a text file.  A Cookie contains only data. The size of the file is regulated and cannot be more than 4kb. 4kb is not very big. A blank page in Word is about 25kb. A cookie is not a program at all, nor is it a virus.

Cookies were ‘baked’ for the first time in the 1990’s by NetScape. They were the breakthrough needed to launch a new Web invention – the Shopping Cart. All the other bits and pieces were there.  A site had items to sell, credit card processing was established, and if you had signed in, you could buy one item at a time.  

So, what if someone wanted to buy more than one item? They didn’t want to have the consumer log in for each transaction.  Thus, they started working on the shopping cart theory.

When you type an address into your browser, the Web server sends you back the page requested, along with a text file which asks your browser to “set cookie.” If your browser accepts cookies, the server then sends another text file which assigns you a unique identifier.  

Once that relationship is established, you can use a shopping cart and add items to it. Since this early time, cookies have evolved and some are very sophisticated, giving rise to security concerns.

When you go to northcoastnews.com (yes Tom, your site sends cookies), Tom’s cookies are very simple and are like most basic websites. They are called “session cookies.”

You request the front page of the North Coast News, the Web server hosting the paper sends the page to you along with a text file – the cookie.

The web server generates a unique identifier – not your name – and it contains the page you requested. It modifies the cookie for tracking information as well – such as if you came to this page from another site, how long you looked at the page and if you looked at other pages. All of this is mostly in “octet” coding.  On my computer, Tom’s cookie looks like this:

Style,null,www.northcoastnews.com/,1600,1655504896,30070649,3929530992,29997223,*,

subscribe_checkbox_6840066539e06b551027244747514d5f,unchecked,www.northcoastnews.com/

(I added the commas – if you look at the cookie, it is one long string)

This is what most cookies do and how most cookies act. When the information is returned to the server, it is used for website statistics. This is how Tom knows how many people are hitting the website,  – he can see if people are reading the paper.

At the other end of the spectrum is a site like Amazon.com. If you have been to Amazon before, you know that if you go there again, it welcomes you with your name, has recommendations based on past purchases. All because of the Cookie.  

The “Bad Guy” in all of this is the advertisers and marketers on the planet.  A pop-up ad can leave a cookie on your computer, even if you don’t click on it. Any ad on any page, may deposit a cookie on your computer. These are called 

‘Third-Party Cookies” and are the cause of most concern. This is how you can be tracked from site-to-site, how you get spam from companies you don’t know, etc.

So, what to do?

As a matter of maintenance, I dump my cookies once a month, and I do it from my browser.

If you have a “spyware” program, like SuperAnti-Spyware, it will quarantine adware cookies, but will leave your session cookies intact. Meaning, it does not delete all of the cookies.

If you are really paranoid, you can surf the Web with a Proxy Server. There are companies that will rent you a Proxy Server and guarantee that you can surf the web cookie free.  Go to MegaProxy.com and check it out.

One thing you should know is that a Website’s Privacy Policy is supposed to tell you what they are doing with cookies and if they are tracking you. 

If you go to www.coastalcap.org, I have provided a plain language privacy policy that explains what we are doing. There is no log in on the site, so all we are doing is collecting visitor stats.

Bruce Richardson is the owner of Purple Tree Farms in Ocean Shores.  Bruce can be reached at 360-500-3643.  His website is www.purpletreefarms.com

1536,1979043840,30062960,640712144,29993111,*,comment_author_6840066539e06b551027244747514d5f,www.northcoastnews.com/,1536,1979043840,30062960,640752144,29993111

(I added the commas – if you look at the cookie, it is one long string)

This is what most cookies do and how most cookies act.  When the information is returned to the server, it is used for website statistics.  This is how Tom knows how many people are hitting the website,  – he can see if people are reading the paper.

At the other end of the spectrum is a site like Amazon.com.  If you have been to Amazon before, you know that if you go there again, it welcomes you with your name, has recommendations based on past purchases.  All because of the Cookie.  

The ‘Bad Guy’ in all of this is the advertisers and marketers on the planet.  A pop-up ad can leave a cookie on your computer, even if you don’t click on it.  Any ad on any page, may deposit a cookie on your computer.  These are called ‘Third-Party Cookies’ and are the cause of most concern.  This is how you can be tracked from site-to-site, how you get spam from companies you don’t know, etc.

So, what to do?

As a matter of maintenance, I dump my cookies once a month, and I do it from my browser.

If you have a ‘spyware’ program, like SuperAnti-Spyware, it will quanantine adware cookies, but will leave your session cookies intact.  Meaning, it does not delete all of the cookies.

If you are really paranoid, you can surf the Web with a Proxy Server.  There are companies that will rent you a Proxy Server and guarantee that you can surf the web cookie free.  Go to MegaProxy.com and check it out.

One thing you should know is that a Website’s Privacy Policy is supposed to tell you what they are doing with cookies and if they are tracking you.  If you go to  HYPERLINK “http://www.coastalcap.org” www.coastalcap.org, I have provided a plain language privacy policy that explains what we are doing.  There is no log in on the site, so all we are doing is collecting visitor stats.

Bruce Richardson is the owner of Purple Tree Farms in Ocean Shores.  Bruce can be reached at 360-500-3643.  His website is www.purpletreefarms.com