When agreeing to cookies on a website, what exactly am I agreeing to?
In: Technology
“Can we put a badge on you with a number that will identify you, so that when you come back to this – or a related – website, we can tell who you were and when you last came to that website, etc.?”
They know that badge number 2389473 visited them on Tues, Fri, went to this page, that page, clicked here, bought this item, came from this Google search, etc. but they don’t know *everything*, only what you’ve given them (what you did while you were wearing the badge).
Clearing cookies is removing all the badges from yourself. You’ll get new ones instead, so they “shouldn’t” be able to link back to whatever number you had before. But you will likely “log in” to a lot of websites, so they will know that your website account was also associated with badge 2389473 and is now being logged into by badge 967493748 too.
It’s a harmless number, on its own, but it provides a lot of links to what you do on them and their sister websites – but bear in mind that you’re ALREADY DOING THOSE THINGS ON THOSE WEBSITES, they know you are, because it’s their website! So it’s not really all as drastic as people make out. It just means they can join together a lot of information that would otherwise look like separate website visitors, knowing that it was all “you”.
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