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- Cookie 5 7 5 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screening
- Cookie 5 7 5 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screens
Freedom from Flash, and Silverlight. Cookie is adept at eliminating Flash and Silverlight cookies, especially large and persistent types of cookie. Impressive results with minimal effort. By consolidating all your cookie controls into an easy interface, Cookie makes maintaining your browsing privacy a cinch. Cookies record your personally identifiable information so they can help auto-fill forms on browsers. This information may include your name, address, account login credentials, and more. If you prefer to protect your privacy when it comes to cookies, you may want to delete them. Manage your passwords responsibly. Do not use the same password among all websites you join. Make sure that the password you use for encrypted or secure sites are different from less secure sites you visit. Don't use the same password you use for your credit cards or bank accounts for your online accounts and vice versa.
What's a cookie?
If you've been anywhere on the internet, you've probably heard of cookies (also known as computer cookies or HTTP cookies). These are small files that websites want to put on your computer and store in your web browser.
But should you accept or block cookies?
Cookies don't infect your computer with malicious software or viruses. They're basically just text files to be read by whatever website or third party put them there. They have a range of uses, some you may like more than others.
The good news is it's not an all-or-nothing affair. Most browsers let you control which kinds of cookies are allowed. Here's how to manage them in Google Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Microsoft Edge – the Windows 10 default browser that replaced Internet Explorer.
But before you decide, you need to understand what each type of cookie does.
First-party cookies
First-party cookies belong to the website you're currently on and don't track what you do on other websites.
There are two kinds of first-party cookies:
Session cookies
These are short-lived and are usually deleted when your browser closes.
Without these cookies, every time you clicked a link – even to load a new page on the same website – it would forget you'd ever been there. For example, say you're shopping online and you add an item to your cart. If you then view another item on a different page, once the new page loads your cart would be empty because there'd be no way to track what you did previously.
Or perhaps a website asked you what language you'd prefer. Without session cookies, you'd have to re-select it with each new page.
Persistent cookies
These live on in your browser after it closes, but self-destruct after a predetermined time – usually within six months. If you ever asked a website to remember your login details, it did so with a first-party persistent cookie.
Persistent cookies may also be used to remember what you read or did while you were on the site, to avoid showing you the same content if you log back on later. While some persistent cookies are first-party, not all are.
Third-party cookies
These are also persistent. They're often used for tracking your movements to gain marketing or demographic data.
If you disable third-party cookies it'll make it harder for advertisers to get information about your online activity. You'll still see ads; they just probably won't be tailored to your interests.
Third-party cookies have also been blamed for slowing down web page loading times. Some browsers, such as Safari and Firefox, block them by default. Others let you opt-out in their settings menu.
How to manage cookies in Google Chrome
At the top-right of a browser window, click the menu button (three vertical dots), then Settings. Scroll down and click Advanced.
In the Privacy and Security section, click Content Settings then Cookies. Turning cookies off completely would disable all the features we've talked about so far, not just the tracking ones. So it's advisable to not block them entirely.
If you enable Keep local data online until you quit your browser, you'll still be able to add items to a shopping cart, but every time you close your browser you'll lose things like automatic sign-ins on your favourite websites.
Block third-party cookies stops the marketing-led cookies that track your internet usage and patterns, while leaving the more-useful cookies running.
If you'd like a fresh start with your new cookie settings, you can delete all your current ones. Click See all cookies and site data, then Remove All.
How to manage cookies in Safari (on macOS)
Since a Safari update in 2017, third-party cookies are blocked by default.
To manage your cookie settings, open Safari and click the Safari menu at the top-left (next to the Apple menu) and select Preferences. In the following window, select Privacy.
Prevent cross-site tracking should be enabled by default. This stops third-party cookies that track you across websites for advertisers.
Cookie 5 7 5 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screening
Ask websites not to track me requests websites to not use both third-party and first-party persistent cookies. It's up to the website to respect your request.
Block all cookies will stop third-party cookies, but also the first-party cookie features mentioned earlier.
To delete the cookies you already have, click Manage Website Data and select cookies from individual websites on the list and click Remove, or select Remove all to delete the lot.
How to manage cookies in Microsoft Edge
Click the ellipsis (…) icon at the top right and select Settings. Scroll down and under Advanced settings, select View advanced settings. Scroll down again and under Cookies there are three options: Block all cookies, Block only third party cookies and Don't block cookies.
If you want to stop other parties tracking your online activity, select Block only third party cookies. This should make it harder for targeted advertisers and data analytics firms to get information about you.
If you Block all cookies then none of the functions we mentioned earlier will work (auto login, adding items to a shopping cart, etc.) and some websites may become unusable.
To delete the cookies you already have, go to Settings then under Clear browsing data, click Choose what to clear. Make sure Cookies and saved website data is ticked, then hit Clear.
Although cookies are in many ways essential to the modern internet, ever since they were created there has been a debate going on about their impact on the privacy of web users.
They are basically a way for a website, and the people who own that site, to store and retrieve data about the user or their interaction with the site. They do this basically to either alter what that person sees, or record their activity (e.g. the pages they visit, how long they spent on a site).
Cookies are central to the modern web experience. So although they are not inherently ‘bad’ there are uses of them where privacy concerns arise.
Storing Personally Identifiable Information
Cookies can be used to store personal data – anything from a name or email address, to a unique user identifier which may just be a random string of letters and numbers. This may be information that you as a user would provide to the site through registration, login pages or order forms. Or it could be information that is uniquely assigned to you by the website. This may be fine as long as that information is both secure and held only temporarily – but often it is not, which means there is a risk it can be intercepted by malicious software – especially when using shared computers.
Tracking User Behaviour
Cookie 5 7 5 – Protect Your Online Privacy Screens
However, the most common privacy concern that people have is the use of third party cookies to track them across different websites, most often used for advertising. This is usually done through the placement of invisible (to the user) tags in the page that set cookies.
When you visit another site with the same tag, it reports to the advertiser the site you were last on when the cookie was set. Adobe illustrator 2020 24 1. By aggregating the information across lots of sites this enables the advertiser to build up a profile of your interests through your browsing history. They then use this information to display more targeted adverts to you, based on your perceived interests.
![Privacy Privacy](https://www.privacypolicies.com/public/uploads/2018/03/how-write-privacy-policy-update.jpg)
In most cases they are actually targeting your browser rather than you – because they don’t know who you are. But as most people login and use the same browser regularly, it can be highly personalised.
And if you let someone else use your computer without creating a separate profile – they will see ads meant for you – which could reveal something about your browsing history you would not be happy to share!
Free Content
Of course, all this advertising pays for a lot of the free content we get on the web, and a lot of people understand and accept this. But many do not, especially as they feel this has been done without their consent.
The other issue is the companies collecting this data are usually not the companies whose websites you are visiting. And they are not only collecting it, but selling to other companies as well. So all of this data is being gathered and aggregated, without most people even being aware of it – and this is what people find objectionable.
Additionally, a lot of this tracking profiling is getting more sophisticated, and is sometimes linked to ‘real world’ identities – like names and addresses. Which increases both the level of intrusion, and the privacy risk if the information is stolen or lost.
Privacy Regulation
Law makers are increasingly looking at bringing in regulations to place some control on this activity. The EU cookie directive is one recent example. This requires websites to declare what cookies they are using and get consent from users to do so.
Although its implementation is currently patchy, it is beginning to raise consumer awareness, which in turn can create market pressure for even greater transparency and choice.
The EU is also looking to introduce a new harmonised Data Protection Regulation, which may require much of the use of third party cookies to be subjected to explicit user consent. Microsoft word 2019 v16 30.
Do Not Track
One of the latest global initiatives is the attempt to create a ‘Do Not Track’ (DNT) standard for the internet. This would be a way for people to use their browser to signal to websites that they don’t want to have their behaviour recorded, and a requirement for websites to then respond to that request.
However much debate remains about what DNT actually means – with lobby groups on both sides defending their corners.
All About Cookies
- How to Manage Cookies