Wahms Helper

There seems to be a lot of concern, and even paranoia, over the innocuous cookie, and I don’t mean the kind with sugar and chocolate chips! Wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia, defines this kind of cookie as follows:

“In computing, a cookie (also tracking cookie, browser cookie, and HTTP cookie) is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by a web browser. A cookie consists of one or more name-value pairs containing bits of information such as user preferences, shopping cart contents, the identifier for a server-based session, or other data used by websites.”

The key thing to note in that somewhat techie definition is the phrase small piece of text. If you know much of anything about computers you will know that there are things that do stuff on computers (programs, widgets, applications, scripts) and there are things that don’t do stuff. A small piece of text is one of those things that doesn’t do anything. It just sits there. That’s an important thing to know about cookies!

Cookies are small pieces of text that contain information collected or created by a website you have visited and then poked it is onto your computer so they, the website, can recognize you when you come back to visit — and so they can use the space on your computer to store your information instead of using space on theirs.

Cookies do not (can not!) collect information from your computer or send information from your computer to others or steal your passwords or credit card numbers. They CANNOT do this. If you are paranoid, and don’t believe me about that, it’s okay, too. You’re safe anyway.

Here’s how a cookie works. You visit a website. Let’s say it’s because you followed an affiliate link. The link contains the registration code for the affiliate associate sending you to the site. The affiliate associate will get a commission on anything you purchase on the site for the next 90 days. You look around the site but you don’t login this time. You don’t create an account or provide any information. You plan on coming back later but you just aren’t ready to buy anything on your first visit.

The site could store information about your visit in a database on its own server but what exactly could it store. It knows the affiliate code from the URL you clicked to get there (that information is passed by your browser to the site you go to) and it knows your IP address (that’s also passed by your browser but that’s discussion for another post if anyone is interested) but it really doesn’t know who you are and, even if they do store your IP address, you might actually have a different one the next time you return.

And, for all they know, you may never come back so why use up their own space storing the little bit of information it now has about you and millions of others like you. Those little bits add up quickly and, ultimately, take up a lot of space.

But if they don’t store something somewhere the associate who sent you the first time would lose out on his commissions when you eventually do return if you didn’t use the same link with the affiliate code that got you to the website in the first place.

Enter the cookie. The website server sends your browser a little piece of text, like a note, that basically says: “You (someone unknown) visited (our site) on (date) using (this) affiliate code.” It says it in a more geeky way but that’s the general idea. When you come back to the site the server asks your browser, “Does this visitor have a cookie from “our site”? Your browser checks through its stored cookies and finds the one with (our site) and says, “Yes, here it is…” and gives the server the cookie. The server checks the date and if less than 90 days have passed it gives the affiliate who’s code is also in the cookie the commission on anything you purchase on that visit.

Cookies sometimes have expiry dates. In the example above the cookie should have an expiry date of 90 days from the date it was created. Your browser should do periodic cookie maintenance deleting expired cookies. Should doesn’t always mean “does” so fortunately you can also manually delete cookies from your computer if they build up excessively or you still feel unsafe. The important thing to remember, though, is that cookies cannot look at your computer and cannot grab information and cannot send it to others. They just can’t.

Okay, so how did some cookie get my credit card number? I looked at my cookies with a cookie-viewer and I saw it! Easy. YOU entered your credit card number when you made a purchase and the site sent it back to you in a cookie so they could use it next time IF you returned to their site. This way they don’t have to store your information on their computer, saving space and reducing risk! Can you imagine how much information they would have to store for millions of one-time visitors who may never come back? Cookies mean you keep your information, I keep mine, we each keep our own. This way the website servers get to store a whole lot less!

Okay, so if a cooking on my computer has my credit card number can’t anyone (any other site I visit) get my credit card number from the cookie? No. Well, sort of no. You see, each cookie has a unique identifier that prevents your browser from giving it up to any site but the one it was issued from. Another site asking for that cookie would have to know the identifier in order to get the cookie. It’s a relatively safe process though there probably are ways to get around it. The thing is, those ways would take more work, and cost more, than getting your private information in any of a number of other easier and cheaper ways. Generally cookies are pretty safe. And you shouldn’t fear them.

For what it’s worth, though, up to this point we have chosen not to use cookies on any of our free or commercial sites including WAHMs Helper. We’ve found other ways to deal with information and, where possible, we don’t take private information at all. We simply choose not to use cookies. It’s not for safety reasons, though, but because of public perception.

You won’t be able to go through the Internet without running into sites that do use cookies. You can turn the feature off in your browser so it won’t accept cookies but, if you do, you are limiting a lot of great things you could do on the ‘net which rely on cookies.

Cookies are actually one of the safest things on the Internet and probably the least likely place you will ever loose personal information. I really don’t know why people spread bad news about something they know little or nothing about but some folks do seem to love drama. Ijust thought you might want to know the truth.

One Response to “Cookies Of A Different Sort”