Cookies
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The internet is built on a very simple concept. Every webpage on the internet
is made up of code called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). When someone accesses
a website or server, such as yahoo, the user's Web browser(i.e. Internet Explorer,
Netscape, etc) will request information from Yahoo's server/computer. Yahoo's
server will then respond with the information requested. Then the information
requested will then display on the users screen (the website, in most cases)
Cookies are small files that the web server or website stores on a users computer
for future reference. Cookies are embedded in the HTML information flowing back
and forth between the user's computer and the servers. Cookies allow the user
to customize the information on their webpage, such as a weather page the weather
would be for that users location. That information(users name, location) will
be stored in the cookie file. Another example would be if you visited a website
and signed up an account. The website then stores a cookie on your computer.
Next time you come back to that site it says "Hello, John. Welcome to Blah.com".
You might have asked yourself one time "Well how in the heck did the website
know my name?", this was done using the cookie.
Essentially, cookies make use of user-specific information transmitted by the Web server onto the user's computer so that the information might be available for later access by itself or other servers. In most cases, not only does the storage of personal information into a cookie go unnoticed, so does access to it. Web servers automatically gain access to relevant cookies whenever the user establishes a connection to them, usually in the form of Web requests.
Cookies are based on a two-part process. First the cookie is stored on the
user's computer without their confirmation or knowing. Secondly, the cookie
is automatically transferred from the user's computer to a Web server. Whenever
a user directs his Web browser to display a certain Web page from the server,
the browser will, without the user's knowledge, transmit the cookie containing
personal information to the Web server.
Questions you may have.
Can a virus be transferred through a cookie? No, so far to this date a virus
cannot be transferred through a cookie.
Should I delete my cookies in Internet Explorer? Depends on what you want. When
you choose to save a password on a site, its stored in a cookie. Unless you
don't want
to lose that password you can remove them.
If you have anymore questions please email Jeanhill@surfmore.net