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Google stores the user preferences in a cookie of name PREF. This cookie is created with default values when the user accesses the site for the first time. For example, the cookie value contains the string NR=10, that indicates a default preference of ten hits displayed in each page. If the user changes this number to 20 in the preference page, the server modifies the cookie with NR=20. Every time the user queries the search engine, the cookie is sent to the server along with the query. This way, the server knows how many hits should be shown in each page.
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Accepting a cookie does not give a server access to your computer or any of your personal information (except for any information that you may have purposely given, as with online shopping). Servers can read only cookies that they have set, so other servers do not have access to your information. Also, it is not possible to execute code from a cookie, and not possible to use a cookie to deliver a virus.
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The purpose of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific Web page. For example, if you personalize Web pages, or register for products or services, a cookie helps the Web page server to recall your specific information. This may be useful to simplify the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you visit the same Web site, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the Web site features that you previously chose. For example:
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In particular, scripting languages such as JavaScript and JScript are usually allowed access to cookie values and have some means to send arbitrary values to arbitrary servers on the Internet. These facts are used in combination with sites allowing users to post HTML content that other users can see.
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IMPORTANT: The server issuing the cookie must be a member of the domain that it tries to set in the cookie. That is, a server called www.myserver.com cannot set a cookie for the domain www.yourserver.com. The security implications should be obvious.
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A cookie is a passive object that can only store data and send that data back to the server under the proper conditions. It requires an application, either on the users computer or on the destination server, to do something with the data in the cookie.
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