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| | The 1 Stop Biz Resource Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | Tutorial - "Dispelling The Cookie Myth" | Views: 318 | | May 23, 2006 6:33 pm | | Tutorial - "Dispelling The Cookie Myth" | # | 
T.E.A.M. Mom! | |
"Dispelling The Cookie Myth"
Cookies are tasty. We love them. We eat them by the billions.
Yea, trillions. And our computers do the same thing. Nearly all
commercial, and many non-commercial sites you visit feed your
computer a cookie.
Okay, what's a cookie, really?
It's a funky name for an itty bitty teeny tiny text file. Want to
see what a cookie looks like? This one has no chocolate chips,
but your computer loves it anyway. I went into the cookie jar on
my computer's hard drive and pulled out a cookie that was planted
by my favorite web site, and it looks like this:
afnum
%5B%5BNumber%5D%5D
newbieclub.com/
0
218933504
30152701
1262157984
29418446
*
Okay, now you know that a cookie is a text file. It's a bit of
"code" that helps a web site know who you are. A perfect example
is Newbie Club. When you became a Member, your computer accepted
our cookie. It's on your hard drive right now! And it's not
malicious, it's not bad, and it's not going to hurt anything. It
won't phone home and it won't grow mold. It's a good cookie. Its
job is to identify you to our database when you come back for a
visit, and greet you by your Name. And that's all it does.
Can a cookie phone home? Can it report on you? Can it give away
sensitive details about you to anyone who asks? The answer is a
resounding NO! Cookies only work with the web sites that set
them. The Newbie Club Cookie is totally useless to anyone but The
Newbie Club.
By the way, you can disable the cookies on your computer if you
want to. It's not the easiest thing to do, and since this
generally causes more confusion than it solves, I'll not spend
any time on it. By "disable" I mean make your computer refuse to
accept cookies.
I hope this tutorial has set your mind at ease. Or maybe it has
stirred up a whole host of troubling thoughts. In any case, if
you've started thinking, that's a good thing. And I'll have done
my job again!
____________________________________________________
Information Provided by Joe Robson, founder of the outrageously successful Newbie Computer training Club at http://newbieclub.com See his other sites listed at http://www.joerobson.com Private Reply to T.E.A.M. Mom! | | |
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