Cookies, also known as HTTP cookies, web cookies, or browser cookies, are simply small pieces of information sent from a site and stored in a user's browser while they are on that site. Every time a user loads a site, the browser sends cookies to the site's server to notify that user about the user's past activity there.
Cookies were made to enhance the perception of dynamic information (such as items in an online shopping cart) or to keep a record of which pages the user was on months or even years ago.
An invisible security breach
While cookies cannot transmit viruses, nor can any third-party software be installed on your computer, cookies that track, maintain, and access data are a potential security threat.
Cookies can also store passwords and various data from profiles or forms that the user previously entered, such as data such as a credit card number or address.
When a user visits a site with cookies enabled for the first time, cookies are sent to the server from their browser to be stored on this site. Later, when the user returns to the same site, the site recognizes him because it stores cookies about the user's information.
Different types of cookies each perform their own function on the modern web. Perhaps the most important of these are authentication cookies. Thanks to them, the server or site will find out whether the user has entered the site or not, and which account should get access to the site. Without these cookies, the site will not know what information to display to the user.
Purity and anonymity
Some vulnerabilities of such a system sometimes allow hackers to take this data and use it for personal gain, they simply gain access to your personal data or to the data that you left on the site. Ordinary advertising companies also access your cookies on a daily basis.
If you've looked at a phone or a sneaker online, chances are all further banner ads you see will be offering you these products. Another proof that cookies must be cleaned.
Some of them are completely harmless, but access to others can seriously harm you. Not clearing cookies and leaving information about yourself on websites is like, for example, deliberately putting a credit card on a table in a cafe or writing your phone number on the fence. Any user on the network can either enable or disable support for cookies, or simply clear them - in each browser there are special options for this in the settings.
