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The Truth About Cookies: Friend or Foe?

When talking about our privacy online, cookies are frequently mentioned.

They are portrayed as nr. 1 enemy in fight against big tech control

But, are they really just bad? Can we use them for a good cause? Let’s take a look

Cookies? Like from a bakery?

No, not these cookies. By cookies i mean little files saved by browsers on our computers for storing little chunks of data

When you visit a website, there are frequently popups with “Do you accept cookies?” paragraphs

What do we even accept?

Cookies and it’s usage

The most well known use of cookies is tracking. But how do they exactly track?

Everyone, who came in contact with cookies, get assigned unique ID. It’s stored in a cookie and enables third-parties to recognize us

Then they can save on their servers every information about us.

Then, such services can use those data about who visited what website, to serve us personalized ads and track us online!

All right, all right. I’ve portayed cookies as a final enemy - but are there any positives?

Cookies in service of internet users

Third-party cookies are ones, who destory good name of those little files

But first-party cookies are a really useful thing. What do they do?

First-party cookies in action

Actually without them, our internet existence would be much less comfortable.

Imagine having to log in every time that you visit a website in a new session. Pretty tiring right?

Or, what about having to log in on every website you want to shop? Because without those cookies, your basket will be saved as long as the browser is open. No time to think then or you write all the addresses down

In addition, you don’t need to log in to save a language preference. We don’t want to look for “change language” buttons every time we visit a website, do we? This would be pretty challenging, especially if foreign language uses different alphabet than latin

First-party cookies are created by domain we’re visiting and are used only for their purposes - why should Google remember in what language did you see that website?

Time for the final verdict

Are cookies that bad?

In my opinion, not really. They’re just a tool, are mostly known for being used in a non-beneficial way for the user. Should we get rid of those in name of our privacy? Not really. By removing them we’d do ourselves more harm, than good.

And what do you think? Share your opinions in comments section.

I’ll gladly read them. Check out my other articles such as:

1. When less is more: Understanding void elements in HTML.
2. Creating remember me in PHP
3. Infinite scroll in PHP and JS
4. My PHP course

Or just use random button in header

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That’s it, see you next time!