Are Cookies Monsters? by Stephen Turbek RAZORFISH REPORTS a publication of the razorfish science department | 23 october2000 | report 037 Internet cookies are a simple, beautiful Cookies Are Generally Safe The most common use of these is to system for letting people interact with The beautiful aspect of the cookie store a user ID. This allows the Web Web sites in a more intelligent fashion. system is that a Web site can only have site to recognize you again when you They are also mistakenly blamed for access to what it knew already - it can return, and is used to reference the per- spying on people, breaching security, not touch another site’s cookies. Each sonal information that is stored securely C. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. and giving away personal information. cookie has a domain address associ- on the Web site’s server. ated with it – a cookie set by coke.com What Are Cookies? can never be accessed by pepsi.com, They can also save information about A “cookie” is a bit of text in a file on but the site diet.coke.com server has your preferences, often simple things the hard drive of a desktop computer. the same domain name and can share for example, your zip code to give you Each cookie can be saved into the file it. personalized news reports. or “set” when the browser loads a page on a Web site. The cookies are sent to Cookies are small text Shopping sites can also store a visitor’s the Web site whenever another file is files used to store shopping cart information in a cookie, loaded. keeping a list of the products for check- information like the out. The browser looks on the hard drive to user name, on the see if there is a cookie for the domain Your Trail of Crumbs name (for example, amazon.com) of the desktop computer. You can look at your cookie file and site it is loading from. If there is, it They cannot travel to other computers see an interesting track of your forays sends the cookie information to the or be put on mailing lists. They are not through the internet. Search for the server along with the request for the active programs and definitely cannot word ‘cookie” and open the file, or page. The server then can read the read your files or erase your hard drive. check your browser’s preferences. cookie information and send personal- ized information, for example welcom- The other important aspect of cookies ing you to the site by name. is that they can only hold what you tell the Web site that saved it. If you never Cookies were invented in 1995 primar- typed in your credit card number to a ily by David Kristol of Bell Labs and Lou Web site, it can not save it into a cookie. Montulli of Netscape. It was originally That said, it is extremely unlikely that implemented in the Netscape Navigator anyone would hold such private infor- browser and was quickly adopted by all SH, INC. RAZORFISH IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF RAZORFISH, AND THE GEAR LOGO SERVICE MARK IN mation in a cookie. I RF the browsers. The term ‘cookie’ was O Z A R internal slang referring to their size. Cookies Store “State” Information 2000 © The biggest problem with creating com- pelling Web experiences is that sites Not bad for you. rarely know who the visitors are. Each page load is almost a completely sepa- The site can keep track of a user’s rate event. This can be likened to the progress through their IP address ( the department store frustration of walking universal address for every computer to yet another help desk only to have to connected to the Internet), but many re-tell all your information. A cookie can people log on from home through Inter- be seen as a name tag that lets each net service providers, such as AOL, helpdesk recognize you and look your which give them a new address every case up on their computer. Stephen Turbek <[email protected]> time they connect. So this address is is in the razorfish science department. only temporary. Are Cookies Monsters? A cookie stores the following fields: the page when it loads, personalizing it, users across Web sites. They created Name of the cookie similar to the amazon.com home page. a furor by attempting to buy a direct Text data (what the cookie stores) In the interests of security, Amazon mail company with a list of names and Expiration date of the cookie does not store your name on the cookie, addresses. This could have violated Domain of server but simply a user number. The rest of the anonymity of cookies by linking your Pathname of domain that cookie is your profile is securely stored on their buying habits with your physical person. resrticted to server. The Internet audience’s outrage caused Whether a secure HTTP connection is them to back down. required to send the cookie Doubleclick, an ad You Do Have Control A Cookie Example service ignited a You can turn off cookie storage in your This cookie was set as a demonstration firestorm of criticism browser’s preferences control. This on the site www.cookiecentral.com prevents cookies from being stored on by attempting to your computer, but can limit your inter- www.cookiecentral.com FALSE connect cookies and action with the some sites. Using third 973977299 VisitorName stephen party programs, such as “CookieCut- personal information. ter”, you can edit your cookies. “www.cookiecentral.com” is the URL of the server that set the cookie. Negative Aspects of Cookies If there was another server named Because cookies are stored on the local To sum up, cookies are a more con- chip.cookiecentral.com, that other desktop machine, if multiple people use venient way of creating compelling server would not be sent the cookie by the same machine, as in a library, the interactivity, but may have the now- the browser. cookies set by the different people get familiar side effect of allowing us to be mixed up. tracked anonymously. Because cook- The “FALSE” note shows that the con- ies can only be seen by the Web site nection between the browser and the Conversely, cookies do not follow you if that created them, they are not a big server does not have to be secure you use another computer. If you surf risk of becoming monsters. (encrypted) for the cookie to be sent. at work and at home, you might as well “973977299” is the expiration date of be two separate people. Cookie trails are circumstantial, forcing site managers to guess what user actions mean. This is true of all Web for more information tracking systems. Netscape’s Description Cookies generally happen without the http://home.netscape.com/ newsref/std/cookie_spec.html They store information inside. user knowing about them, leaving the impression that the use is being spied Cookie Discussion the cookie, written in an encoded form. upon. To notify the user each time http://developer.netscape.com:80/ The expiration date is the date when the a cookie is set would be annoying, viewsource/archive/goodman_cookies.html cookie will be deleted. All cookies have though. an expiration date. Cookies are fragile. They get reset How Cookies Work http://www.howstuffworks.com/ “VisitorName” is the name of the cookie, often when changing browsers or trou- cookie7.htm chosen by the site makers. ble-shooting your computer. “stephen” is the name entered on the Cookies could be used to track your site. buying habits, leading to more ads by razorfish reports are published regularly by the sites you visit. DoubleClick, an the razorfish science department for our This cookie is used to put a name on Internet ad firm, uses cookies to track colleagues and the interested public. reports.razorfish.com | [email protected] | www.razorfish.com razorfish.