What is a cookie?
A cookie is a harmless text file that is stored in your browser when you visit almost any web page. The usefulness of the cookie is that the website is able to remember your visit when you navigate through that page. Although many people do not realise that cookies have been used for 20 years, when the first browsers appeared on the World Wide Web.
What is a cookie NOT?
It is not a virus, nor a Trojan, nor a worm, nor spam, nor spyware, nor does it open pop-up windows.
What information does a cookie store?
Cookies do not usually store sensitive information about you, such as credit cards or bank details, photographs, your ID or personal information, etc. The data they keep are of a technical nature, personal preferences, personalisation of contents, etc.
The website server does not associate you as a person but it recognises your web browser. In fact, if you regularly use Internet Explorer and try browsing the same website with Firefox or Chrome you will see that the website does not realise that you are the same person because you are actually associating the browser, not the person.
What kind of cookies are there?
Technical Cookies: These are the most basic and allow, among other things, to know when a human or an automated application is navigating, when an anonymous user and a registered user navigate, which are basic tasks for the operation of any dynamic website.
Analysis Cookies: Thee collect information about the type of navigation you are making, the areas you use most, products looked at, time zone of use, language, etc.
Advertising Cookies: These show advertising based on your navigation, your country of origin, language, etc.
What are own and third-party cookies?
Own cookies are those generated by the page you are visiting and those of third parties are those generated by external services or providers such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.
What happens if I turn off cookies?
To understand what happens or not with cookies off we have some examples:
You will not be able to share content from that website on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network.