Computer or Internet Cookies & web-beacons | it's uses, it's pros and cons,block or enable coockies

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Through Cookies a website stores user data on the user's computer or mobile for further use by the website.

What is computer cookies


In this, We will deep dive into

  1. What are computer cookies?
  2. Why most uses cookies?
  3. Types of internet online Cookies
  4. What is web-beacons technology? Pros and cons 
  5. Are cookies bad or harmful? Cookies pros and cons.
  6. How to block or enable cookies in browsers like Chrome, Internet Explorer(, Firefox, etc?

let's start our journey.

Cookies are small text files stored in a website's user computer or mobile in which a user opens the website. Cookie files mostly contain the preferences of a user from a variety of services a website provides on his computer or mobile devices. When the user visits the same website again (before the expiration period of a cookie) he finds the magic either his contents are loading faster or he/she finds the same thing which he was going to search in the website. The cookies concept was invented by Lou Montulli in 1994 while he was working with Netscape for the help of website users to find their relevant product faster in this huge world internet and making the commercial websites more relevant but nowadays these advertising network companies are hugely depending upon these cookies to show relevant ads to the internet users. We will dig into this more in the sections.

You must have come across millions of websites showing "We use cookies to improve your experience or something like This website uses cookies to remember you and improve your experience." and want your consent to accept or decline their cookies to store in your computer/mobile phones here the question is why these websites use cookies no matter how small or large the website is - the simple answer to this is they want to provide a personalized experience to their users. Let's have an example for better understanding Let's you have visited a big world-class news website which provides content in different languages, with different content categories, also includes news from different parts of the world and news is such a thing which is consumed daily by everyone so, every day when you enter the website did you want the website ask you which category of content you want to see and in which language you want to read so you will say no, so, website simple want that you should accept their cookies and website will save your personalized things in your computer so you need not give them again. But as like other and every case cookies have some advantages and some times it also goes disadvantageous. let's discuss this next section.

Session Cookies

Session Cookies are temporary Cookies that get destroyed when a user closes the browser. Session cookies have a great and lovely example in most of the e-commerce shopping websites they have shopping cart technique before the user has logged in to the platform still he can save a product in his cart and when the user logged in to his account it gets transferred in to his original shopping cart. But before logged in if one user have added some product he /she must have to logging to his original account before closing the browser neithetr the products will get erased.

Permanent Cookies

Permanent cookies gets started when you probably sign-in or sign-up in any website or online accounts.These cookies are most useful cookies both for user as well as admins of the websites.Users need not have to sign-up in every page they visit in a single website (example. a user need not have to login in every page when anothet page loads of same website) and for admins and programmers by the help of session cookies techMique they reduce server load by decreasing number of login requests from user and also user spent more time in a website seamlessly so indirectly increasing revenue of the website.According to law a permanent cookie should be cleared from the user device with in 12 months of start still most of the website clear all their cookies before that and many website donot provides permanent Cookies for user safety.

Flash Cookies

These are very specialized cookies used by websites to store datas about videos players and it's datas and other players and readers used by websites from adobe company, but these are very powerful cookies because these cookies are not gets cleared from user computer when all cookies gets cleared from the web browser if user as these gets stored in local file found only by adobe flash player setting manager. But this technology is old getting out of the internet very ghastly because many people are blaming this technology still most of the browser support this flash Cookies.

Third-party Cookies

Thse ate cookies which are hidden but are very annoying not directly rather by the ads they show. I think you got the point that cookies are mostly used by third-party advertising networks to show personalized ads to the user of a website in which their ads have been enabled .To be honest most of the website remain live in the internet and provides us our favorite contents by using ads in their website and earning revenue from that ads.So these ads are shown actually by the ads network companies so we are calling Athena as third-party.These ads networks try to find out the interest of a person and improve their services for a user by updating their colors day by day in out devices and provides us best,relevant and useful ads.

Zombie cookies

This one is the most dangerous Cookies in case of flash cookies you can still clear it but this you can't it gets saved to your system in some dedicated space of memory and mostly used for website user tracking and it can recreate some perticular HTTP browser cookies automatically also.Browser are taking a lot of steps to keep these cookies safe with our any breachs.

Web-beacons is a mostly used by third-party advertising or website analytics companies used to analyze the reaction of user for a product or thing a website is showing to a user. Advertising networks use it for calculating the clocks and view time on a ads shown through a website to the website user. Web-beacons are are also called and known in many other names like,tracking bug, web bug, tag,pixel tag, web tag, page tag, tracking pixel, 1×1 GIF, or clear GIF ,etc. Web-beacons also used in emails for tracking the out put of a email campaign like email opening, click through email etc. It is very useful tool for developers to find the usefulness of a new launched product in a website and obviously very useful for advertising companies .Thare is no such cons of Web-beacon technology.

Every science technology inventions brings bring positivity and negativity with it but now its your choice to use it or not rather if is providing better values except its cost of negativity you must try it.Cookies not only help the companies, it also help user of a IT product by providing the most useful and personalized result every time.Cookies are just like your unregisterd servants who works for you in background but you cannot notice him.but if you have some serious fear of threat to your data.you can block most of the cookies in your browser.

Lets discuss one by one

1.Chrome

  1. Open chrome click three  dots in the right top corner of the screen ( present in right of search bar in chrome) 
  2. click on setting .
  3. Under the privacy and sequrity section find site setting .
  4. Find cookies and other site data.
  5. Now chose how much cookies you want to allow.



2.Microsoft edge
  1. Open Microsoft edge(previously called internet explorer) click on three horizontal dots in the left top corner of the page.
  2. Settings and more. 
  3. Settings. 
  4. Site permission .
  5. Cookies and site data. 
  6. And switch on block third party cookies. 

3.Firefor

  1. Open Firefox and Click on horizonta three lines. 
  2. Go-to settings. 
  3. Enter privacy and security panel. 
  4. In the enhanced tracking protection section find costume and click on it. 
  5. Click on cookies select type of cookies you want to allow for your Firefox.
!! At last I want to say that cookies are not bad and keep In mind that some websites may not work properly if you will switch off the cookies for it. 

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