In addition to small, delicious desserts, if someone's talking about cookies, they could mean internet cookies. It's very common for even web-savvy people to be slightly confused about what cookies do and what they're for. Some people have come to fear internet cookies, deleting them every chance they get.
So what exactly is a cookie as it relates to the internet? In the simplest of terms, when your computer visits a webpage, the webpages gives your computer a cookie, which it stores on your hard drive. When your computer visits that webpage again, it shows the website the cookie, and the webpage "recognizes" you. Think of it as a small badge or ID card the website reads.
If you've ever visited a website twice, and it's remembered your log in information or your automatically logged you in that's because of a cookie. When I log in to my Google account, it automatically knows my account, password, name, preferences, and lots of other things. That's because I have a cookie on my computer that has this information on it. A cookie is simply a small text file like "ID=JaneSmith Password=2Cute4You!"
A lot of people think that cookies can let viruses in to their computers, or let hackers get their personal information, but that's not true. A cookie saved on your computer is the same as any other text document with words on it. The worst thing a cookie can do is go bad.
If you have a technology question you'd like answered, comment on this post or send me an email. Reader submitted questions are the best ones!
Practical Tip of the Day:
If your web browser is acting slow or funny, you can try deleting your cookies. Sometimes something happens to internet cookies and they just "go bad". All web browsers have options for deleting cookies, usually in the settings. Once you delete your cookies, you'll notice you'll need to log in again to all the websites that normally remembered you, and maybe fill in forms by hand again. (Some website cookies remember things like your home address if you enter it into a form on the page.)
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