The Internet keeps mentioning them, but I wonder if you have any idea what a “cookie” is when we are talking about them in the context of computers. 

Nearly every website we can visit online these days uses cookies.   We all know that a cookie is the US equivalent of what we in England would call a biscuit, so the next question has to be ‘what have biscuits got to do with the internet?’

There are many stories as to how cookies got to have that name.  The idea is that they are tempting but with hidden aspects; much like a Chinese fortune cookie which holds hidden information inside, or the US girl scouts who have a day when they knock door-to-door and offer biscuits in exchange for bits of innocent information about the householder.  (They have knocked so they already know your address, and while offering the cookie they ask for your name; they are gradually beginning to build up more details about you)

But, simply put, they are the bits of data information that allow the internet to identify your computer and what you do with it.   They can pick up on information such as your email address for instance.  So if you usually go to your emails on one phone, lap top, or tablet and then use a different computer (say a friends you are visiting, or the one at the local library) you are likely to get an email letting you know that this has happened just in case it was not you that did it.  This can only be a good thing because if someone else is using your account you will know a lot more quickly.

They are used for lots and lots of other things too.  Have you ever wondered why the adverts that appear around the information you are trying to look up often have something to do with items that you have been searching for in the recent past?  Cookies are the answer there.  If you use Google Chrome as your browser, when completing an online form, have you noticed that once you input your name, all your other details often automatically appear without you having to fill them in?  Cookies often remember your name, address and telephone number for you if you are using your usual computer device.

In the early part of this century the EU decided, amongst other things, that we users of the Internet need to know what websites use them to access our information and so they insist on that fact being made available to each user before you enter the site.  This is why, when you get to most web sites these days, there is a note about them somewhere on your screen or you will find a box about them that blocks what you want to read, unless you click on the cross which appears in one corner or the other so that it disappears.  By doing that you are usually accepting what they do with your information.

Some people will call them dangerous and others a great help but they are really just a fact of modern internet life.

Maureen B.

Even when put simply this can be a really complicated subject but, if you want to know a little more about cookies, LPG has found some information that might help…

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