What are cookies?

What are cookies?

Cookie is a small piece of data stored on the user’s machine like computer or smartphone and they are saved via browsers. When user is surfing through the internet websites can store cookies on the machine.

Cookies were designed to provide statefull information regarding the last saved user’s status on certain website. It can be login status, shopping cart, saved items, visited pages etc.

The most important role cookies act in the authentication area, where provide the information about user whether is logged in or not. Thanks to that website or app know if can send to the user sensitive data or the user must be authenticated.

Cookies might cause security vulnerabilities and let attacker read cookie’s data.

What cookies do?

Most often cookies help to store data related to user’s account and track his activity. That means cookies are useful in terms of basic usage as saving items in shopping cart and less likely when as 3rd party cookies store and send data about users’ usage for analytics or remarketing purposes.