You have been browsing the internet and chances are when you visit a website for the first time then for some of websites you may have come across a pop-up or a notification banner: “This website uses cookies” with buttons for accept and change settings. Sometimes you just say, Oh whatever that is! Let me just get into the website and press the Accept button to go about your way. So let us understand what is happening behind the scenes.
What is a web cookie?
Web cookie or browser cookie is a small piece of information which is send from website server to be stored in a user’s browser. The user may store it in its computer which is basically used to identify the computer. That is, maintain stateful information so the next time, user visits the website or on the next request it can send back, the cookie that can have some kind of information about the user that the server can make use of to make certain decisions. Other purposes could be for instance, track user’s browser activity or remember login details, track site’s user count etc.
Who invented it?
The term was coined by web browser programmer who invented cookie Lou Montulli in the year 1994 while building an e-commerce website.
Why do we see the cookie banner pop up?
The reason why we see the cookie banner popping up recently across most websites is because of legal concerns in Europe and some other countries, the GDPR(General Data Privacy Regulation) requires that the cookie banners be displayed on website to let the users know that cookies are being used by the website.
Where is a cookie useful?
Its used in session management to manage session of the user in ecommerce website. Its used for personalization like the settings that were set and saved by the user and as said earlier, also used for tracking to improve the user experience as they say it 😉
Vivishine 