LYCOS RETRIEVER
Cookies: Users
built 614 days ago
Cookies are a very simple but extremely important tool. Many sites that require entrants to use cookies so that security can be kept at a maximum. Sites like BirdgePath, the job finder server, and Guestimate employ cookies to make their system more secure by tracking a user as she travels the site. When you log in, you receive a cookie that identifies you to the server. It can then pull up information about you from the database and store characteristics on you like how many times you logged in or what careers you might be interest in.
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Cookies are an important part of the Internet, especially with those sites that are looking to provide customized user experiences or user logins. Unfortunately, cookies are ... one of the most misunderstood aspects of building dynamic web sites. The following information will help guide webmasters by explaining cookies and how to utilize them effectively in web sites.
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Cookies have some important implications on the privacy and anonymity of Web users. While cookies are only sent to the server setting them or one in the same Internet domain, a Web page may contain images or other components stored on servers in other domains. Cookies that are set during retrieval of these components are called third-party cookies.
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Cookies are commonly used to "maintain the state" of the session as a user browses around the site. The shopping cart is an example. You can place an item in the cart, switch to another page or even another site, and when you come back, the site knows who you are, and you can continue with the order. Without cookies, the site would not be able to identify you automatically because the Internet is "stateless." See state and stateless.
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Cookies are stored on the computer's hard drive. They cannot access the hard drive - so a cookie can't read other information saved on the hard drive, or get a user's e-mail address etc. They only contain and transfer to the server as much information as the users themselves have disclosed to a certain web site.
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Cookies can ... be used for tracking the path of a user while visiting the web pages of a site. This can also be done in part by using the IP address of the computer requesting the page or the referer field of the HTTP header, but cookies allows for a greater precision. This can be done for example as follows:
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