So What's A Cookie For, Anyway?

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With all of the rhetoric about cookies, many people don't ...
... little text files were invented for a reason.
In fact, cookies ... to solve the ...
... of Alzheime With all of the rhetoric about cookies, many people don't understand thatthese little text files were invented for a reason.
In fact, cookies werecreated to solve the internet's equivalent of Alzheimer's disease. You see,web sites do not remember who they are talking to!The web was designed to be simple and straightforward.
You (a browser suchas Internet Explorer or Netscape) ask for something from a web server. Theweb server obediently hands it to you, then goes off to do something else.This is due to the original purpose of the web - a vast electronic library!The web was never designed to support electronic commerce.
It was designedto support reading text. Images, videos, sounds and commerce was allshoehorned into the structure later.Okay, so web servers are forgetful.
What exactly does this mean? The browserasks the web server for an object (a web page, image, graphic or whatever)and the server obligingly returns it. The connection to the browser is thenclosed and forgotten.Thus, the next time the browsers makes a request of the web server, the poorserver has no easy way to know that it is the same as before.
As far as theserver is concerned, every single request to do something is a uniquerequest from a different computer.This makes any kind of transaction control very difficult. Think about itfor a minute and you'll understand.
You enter your personal information intoa screen, which sends you to a second screen to enter your name and address.If the web server does not know that you are you, then how in the heck doesit relate the credit card information to your name and address?The answer is cookies. To put it very simply, a cookie is simply a way forthe web server to know that you are indeed you.
In the previous example, acookie would allow the server to know that the name and address are relatedto the credit card number.How does this work? Well, the server creates a small text file on yoursystem called a cookie. This text file can only be referenced by thatserver, and it contains a simple unique number which identifies you.Whenever the server does something it tries to read this cookie to see if itknows who you are.
Thus, when the screen allowing you to enter your name andaddress is displayed, the browser tries to read a cookie, effectively asking"do I know who you are?". It does the same thing on the credit card entryscreen.Okay, this all seems harmless enough, doesn't it? So how is this veryharmless and exceptionally useful system abused?Cookies can be set to last until the browser exits, or they can be set toexpire (be deleted) far into the future.
Various advertising companiesactively abuse this feature - and this has led to the public backlashagainst cookies.You see, cookies can be created and read when any object is loaded from aweb server. This includes banners and web bugs (small graphics designed tohelp advertisers track who is looking at their ads).The advertising companies take advantage of this feature to set cookies onyour computer so they can build up a picture of what sites you've beenlooking at.
The banners effectively ask "have I seen this person (computersystem) before?" If the answer is "yes" (a cookie exists), then a notationis made in your profile on the advertisers computer system.Believe me, it does not take long for an advertising agency to build up avery nice understanding of exactly what you do on the internet. Why do theywant to do this? To make more money, of course.How does this work? An advertising agency sells eyeballs.
The theory theyoperate on is simple. The more qualified the eyeballs, the more likely thatbanners are to be clicked, and the more likely that sales are to be made.Thus, if you typically surf, say, Star Trek sites, you may be interested inseeing advertisements about Science Fiction movies, and theoretically youwill be more likely to purchase tickets.Okay, why is this a problem? Do you really want an advertising agencyknowing everything about your web surfing habits? Do you trust them? Do youthink they will keep this information private?Or to put it another way, these companies are making money (lots of money)based upon your eyeballs.
They are not sharing that money with you - infact, they never even asked your permission to gather information about you.As an analogy, suppose you were reading a magazine on a park bench andsomeone was hiding in the tree over your head, recording every page that youlooked at in a notebook. How long would you put up with this behavior?Thus, the public is simply objecting to the unethical use of cookies totrack their movements through the internet.
And as you can see, a veryuseful tool has been corrupted by companies whose motives are suspect, tosay the least. Article Tags: Credit Card, More Likely Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .