Cookies- The Hard Facts

In thelast year, "cookies" have become an increasing topic ofdiscussion in the online world. A cookie is a small piece ofinformation written to the hard drive of an Internet user when heor she visits a website that offers cookies. Cookie files areextremely small, comprising no more than 255 characters and 4k ofdisk space (Christle). Cookies can contain a variety ofinformation, including the name of the website that issued them,where on the site the user visited, passwords, and even usernames and credit card numbers that have been supplied via forms(Dyrli, 20). Cookies are supposedly only retrievable by the sitewhich issued them, and link the information gathered to a uniqueID number assigned to the cookie "so that...information isavailable from one session to another." (Sullivan).

The mostpressing issue concerning cookies, more than possible hardwareinvasions and general unease with the placing of files on userhard drives by third parties is the concern of user privacy andthe potential for abuse. Advertisers and webmasters are currentlyusing cookies to develop detailed profiles of users and theirbrowsing habits. Each click on a particular type of advertisementor page in a website is added to the profile maintained by themaintainer. For the time being this information is primarily usedfor website design and the placement of banner advertisements,but the possibility also exists for these profiles to be sold andresold to other commercial interests (Roubulack). This could leadto deeper incursions into personal privacy, because if any one ofthe cookie-maintainers links a user identity to their cookie ID,then that information could also be resold. "...once youridentity becomes known to a single company listed in your cookiesfile, any of the others might know who you are every time youvisit their sites".