Normally when you hear the word cookie you begin imagining the smell of baked goods fresh out of the oven. This is not quite the same thing. In the world of computers, cookies are pieces of data that track where a user goes on the Internet and what they look at. Many people are unaware of the number of cookies found on their computer or that cookies even exist in the first place. I was astounded to check my cookies. I've inserted a picture below.
1, 158 cookies?! I immediately cleared all of my website data. Of course I quickly realized that this logged me out of all of my accounts, including Blogger itself. I had seen advertisements for things that I had just been looking at on Amazon, and I knew that they were cookies but I never did anything about it. It had gotten to the point that it was annoyingly obvious. Right after I'd leave Amazon, the item I was looking at would appear as an ad on another website. As annoying as this is, cookies aren't always a bad thing. They're very beneficial for businesses. Cookies allow the business to see how the customer found you, how many times they've visited your site, as well as the other sites they've visited and how many times they've visited those. This may be a good thing for the business but there's always a downside. One instance that many customers may not know about is the use of cookies when booking a flight. If you use the same website for purchasing a plane ticket, the sight will read that you have been there before and raise the price over time. Another downside for internet users who block cookies is getting blocked by certain websites. I did noticed that after I switched my settings to block cookies from third parties and advertisers I was stopped every know and then by sites that required the use of cookies.
Although it may be annoying to have to log in to accounts again and occasionally getting stopped by certain websites that require cookies after clearing your cookie data, it's worth it.
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