Chapter 23. Cookies - Do they taste good?
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© 2001 - Barry Wroobel - Discovery Data Systems, inc.

Chapter 23. Cookies - Do they taste good?
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There is an ongoing controversy regarding the issue of cookies. This issue is almost universally misunderstood by the average visitor. Let us start with what a cookie is. A cookie is a small file placed in a special folder on your computer by the web page. The typical use of this cookie is to identify you when you revisit the page. Many people are scared by the thought of your web page writing to their disk. A web page is EXTREMELY limited in what it can write in the form of a cookie. First, the data must be rigidly structured. The web page can not write just anything. Further, a single cookie can not be any larger than 4000 bytes. A single web page can not have more than 12 cookies and there is a finite number of total cookies that can exist (I forgot the exact number). The last factor that makes cookies safe is that only the web page that created the cookie can read it. Typical information that is stored in a cookie include the date and time that you last visited the page, possibly your user name and password for that site, other personal information that the visitor had to give to the web page in the first place. Typical web users are afraid that putting personal information in a cookie through a web page, will make it available to the whole world. The cookies process was invented and implemented just for the that specific purpose. If it were that easy to get to the personal information, cookies would not be used. Having said that, there are actually a number of ways to get to cookies, even ones written by other pages. However, if you are smart when you use cookies, the data stored in the cookie will be encrypted. Even if another web page gets to the information, they will not be able to make use of it. If you use cookies, you should give the visitor the right to refuse cookies and you should explain to them what you plan to store in the cookie, how it will be used, and what benefits they will realize by allowing you to use them.

© 2001 - Barry Wroobel - Discovery Data Systems, inc.
(note: Set left and right printer margins to 0.25" for printing)