How The Cookie Crumbles – Ways To Clean Up Those Crumbs

Cookies can be annoying and invasive invaders that give outsiders your personal information without your permission or knowledge.  Someone can match your name, address, sex, age, health, and financial status, with the web sites you visit and how often.  These innocuous bits of information are called “cookies” and can be a real headache.

In computer language, a cookie is defined as a piece of information that a web site you visit stores on your computer’s hard drive.  Usually, the site creates the cookie the first time you visit and then retrieves it each time you return.  Cookies can seem so convenient, filling your shopping carts at your favorite online stores to allow you to keep track of your purchases until you check out.  They can allow you to check the status of an order or even personalize your visits to their pages.

If you have ever logged on to a favorite site and created a customized “My Yahoo” for example, you have already been profiled to determine what you would like to see when you visit their sites.  They may already be doing it and you never even noticed, but cookies are the way they determine your “favorite things.”  Cookies also allow web sites to gather information they want, like how many people visit certain pages, and how often.  This helps them gauge the popularity or usefulness of those web pages.

One of the most popular uses for cookies is targeted marketing.  This is where web sites hire media service companies that place their ads on the web site pages and “capture” those who view them.  You may not even notice these ads, but they notice you and in the mean time are creating a cookie on your computer’s hard drive that assigns it a unique ID number.  After that, whenever you visit any web site that contains as ad by the same media service, the browser returns your ID number to that site.  It recognizes you and creates a profile describing your interests, which were revealed by the sites you visited and prepares customized ads that will appear next time you visit.  This is absolutely customized marketing and they are targeting you without your knowledge.

The big problem with this is when you register on a site with your name, address, and other personal information.  Your browsing choices will be tied with your personal information, which gives anyone that has access to this information a peek into your privacy.  This is the part that troubles many people when they are online, and that you should be aware of.

Luckily, there are several ways to combat these cookies.  You can program your computer to not accept cookies without your permission.  Try turning the “cookies” setting off on your computer.  This eliminates the potential privacy risks, but may limit or prevent the use of many websites. All significant web browsers have this disabling ability built-in, with no outside program required.

Also, users may frequently delete any stored cookies. Some browsers have the option to have the system clear cookies automatically whenever the user closes the browser. Another way is by allowing cookies in general, but preventing their abuse. You can also find a host of wrapper applications that will redirect cookies and cache data to another location. Using such programs prevent the storing of browsing information on the actual computer and sends the information off-system when the user takes out the USB flash memory device.

There are also software products that are designed to manage cookies.  Some clean up the cookies after they have been stored on your hard drive and others actually intercept cookies beforehand, and some do both.

Maintaining and protecting your privacy while online is an important goal for everyone.  Now that you are aware of cookies and how they work, you should be able to clean up those crumbs!