What is a cookie?
A cookie is a harmless text file that is stored in your browser when you visit almost any web page. The usefulness of the cookie is that the web is able to remember your visit when you return to browse that page. Although many people do not know it, cookies have been used for 20 years, when the first browsers for the World Wide Web appeared.
A cookie is not...
It is not a virus, not a Trojan, not a worm, not spam, not spyware, nor does it open pop-up windows.
What information does a cookie store?
Cookies do not usually store sensitive information about you, such as credit cards or bank details, photographs, your ID or personal information, etc. The data they keep is of a technical nature, personal preferences, personalization of content, etc.
The web server does not associate you as a person but with your web browser. In fact, if you regularly browse with Internet Explorer and try to browse the same website with Firefox or Chrome, you will see that the website does not realize that you are the same person because it is actually associating the browser, not the person.
What are own and third party cookies?
Own cookies are those generated by the page you are visiting and those of third parties are those generated by external services or providers such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.
What happens if I deactivate cookies?
To understand the scope of disabling cookies, we show you some examples:
- You will not be able to share content from that website on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network.
- The website will not be able to adapt the contents to your personal preferences, as is often the case in online stores.
- You will not be able to access the personal area of that website, such as My account, or My profile or My orders.
- Online stores: It will be impossible for you to make purchases online, they will have to be by phone or by visiting the physical store if you have one.
- It will not be possible to customize your geographical preferences such as time zone, currency or language.
- The website will not be able to perform web analytics on visitors and traffic on the web, which will make it difficult for the web to be competitive.
- You will not be able to write on the blog, you will not be able to upload photos, post comments, rate or rate content. The web will also not be able to know if you are a human or an automated application that publishes spam.
- It will not be possible to show sectorized advertising, which will reduce the advertising revenue of the web.
- All social networks use cookies, if you deactivate them you will not be able to use any social network.
Can you delete cookies?
Yes. Not only delete, but also block, in a general or particular way for a specific domain.
To delete cookies from a website, you must go to your browser settings and there you can search for those associated with the domain in question and proceed to delete them.