Cookies are files that are stored on the user's PC and contain information about the sites he has ever visited. With the help of cookies, you can find out which pages the user has visited.
Cookies are files with information about ever visited sites that are stored on the user's computer. That is, when a user visits a web resource, information about him is recorded in a cookie and the next time he visits this site, it is transmitted to the web server.
What are we for
Cookies contain a variety of information, for example, account passwords on sites, the color of the template, the font size that the user has made for the site, etc. The clearest example of how you can use cookies to save settings is provided by the Google search engine. This machine provides the ability to customize your search results, we are talking about the number of results per page, the format of the pages displayed, the interface language and other settings.
As for the passwords for accounts on sites, each user has repeatedly noticed that once having specified his username and password on any web resource, he did not do this after re-authorization, since this information about the site was automatically registered in cookies. When you visit the resource again, the data is sent to the web server, which automatically recognizes the user, freeing him from the need to fill in the fields again. Cookies can also be useful for keeping statistics.
Cookies cannot pose any threat to your computer. It is just text data, unable to harm him. With the help of cookies, you cannot delete, transfer or read information from the user's PC, however, you can find out which pages he visited. Modern browsers already provide the user with a choice: whether to save cookies or not, but if he chooses the service of disabling the saving of cookies, he should be prepared for problems in working with some sites.
Disadvantages of cookies
First, cookies do not always have the ability to accurately identify a user. Secondly, they can be stolen by an intruder. As far as misrecognition is concerned, this may be due to the user using multiple browsers. After all, each browser has its own storage, so cookies do not identify the user, but his browser and PC, and if he has several browsers, then there will be several sets of cookies.
Attackers can be attracted by the constant exchange of cookies between the user's browser and the web server, because if the network traffic is not encrypted, it is possible to read the user's cookie using special sniffer programs. This problem can be solved by encrypting traffic and using different protocols.
