I’m referring to the ones such as when you visit a website, and there is a notice that says “this site uses cookies”
In: Other
When you visit a web site, the web server can ask your computer to store a short bit of text on your computer and to send it back the next time you visit.
The original idea was that this: Say it’s an online shopping site, it might ask your browser to store “customer: 12842”, where that is your customer account number. The next time you come back, your web browser will tell the server “By the way, last time you asked me to store ‘customer: 12842′” and the server will know it’s you and can greet your with your name, and your half-filled shopping cart.
In principle, any cookie information is only given back to the same server that put it there.
Now, for the catch: Say, there is a little “Facebook” button at the bottom of some news web site. To display the button, your browser sends a request to the Facebook web server to ask for the image with the Facebook button and logo. In doing so, your browser tells Facebook which site it is one and also transmits any cookie that Facebook may have put on your browser previously, and these cookies may contain your Facebook account number. So, now Facebook can connect and knows that you (as identified by your Facebook account name in the cookie) are interested in the topics of this news site (as identified by the address of the web site that contained the Facebook button) and Facebook uses this to tailor advertisement for you. Facebook, of course, has buttons on many pages of many news sites from many different news publishers, so they will get a good idea what kind of news you like to read.
So, the advertiser follows you around, collecting information on what sites you visit. You might not like that, and this is why the site is legally required to inform you about that.
Latest Answers