Author: Melissa Sanchez
Melissa is a student employee with Technology Services and is a senior at Illinois majoring in Communications.
We are all familiar with a pop up that includes some kind of website cookie notice. These pop ups prompt you to make a choice: to accept cookies, manage them or to deny them outright. Regardless of your choice, most of us click a button without thinking about it too much. But what are cookies? Why are they used? And why should anyone care?
What are cookies? What do they do?
Cookies are small packets of data sent from a website to your browser that allows the website to track user data. Websites will create a file made up of a unique string of letters and numbers and associate it with you so that it can keep track of your activity while the cookie is active. There are several different functions for cookies, but there are generally two types: essential and nonessential.
Essential cookies are required for a website to work properly and are always enabled automatically. You do not need to be asked for these to activate, but even if you were, you wouldn’t want to decline them! They do things like connect you to the webpage’s server, keep track of your account information and keep you logged in while you browse a website. They are vital for websites to be usable.
The other kinds of cookie are nonessential. These cookies can be disabled without preventing the website from loading but disabling them could change the experience of using the website. These cookies are used to customize ads based on your history, track your browsing activity and even allow you to share social media content between platforms.
How do they affect my privacy?
While all cookies track your activity to some extent, some of them can track far more than you realize. Third party cookies are cookies that are activated on one website that have the ability to track your activity on different websites. These cookies are the reason that, for example, you may be looking at clothing on one website and later see an ad for that brand somewhere else.
When should I clear them? Why?
You should clear or at least check your cookies fairly frequently. Despite being a small amount of data, cookies still take up space on your devices and browsers. Having too many at once can slow down your device and make things like downloads and processing take longer.
Clearing your cookies also makes sure that you are not being tracked or monitored by anyone without you knowing it. Beyond just transmitting data to advertisers, some non-essential cookies can be used to access private information on your browser such as passwords or other secure data.
How do I clear them?
You can clear your cookies in your browser settings, though the exact steps vary by browser. Be aware that clearing your cookies may log you out of certain websites as well as deleting some of your history or saved preferences.
Chrome
- Open Chrome and click on the three dots in the top right corner.
- Open the Settings.
- Click Privacy and security, then Third-party cookies.
- Click See all site data and permissions and then Delete all data.
- Click Delete to confirm.
Firefox
- Click the menu button to open the menu panel.
- Click History, then select Clear Recent History.
- Select how much history you want to clear.
- Use the boxes to choose the information you want to clear.
- Click the clear button
Safari
- Go to the Safari app and choose Safari, then Settings.
- Click Privacy, then click Manage Website Data.
- Select one or more websites, then click Remove or Remove All.
Microsoft Edge
- Find settings and more on the top right corner of the browser.
- Select Settings, then Privacy, search, and services.
- Find Clear browsing data and select Choose what to clear.
- Under Time range, choose a time range from the list.
- Select Cookies and other site data, and then select Clear now.
