When you think of cookies, your first thought may be of a beloved grandparent’s home, perhaps during a holiday celebration, eating sweet delicious doughy treats freshly baked out of the oven.  Or perhaps you think back to your TV set watching June Cleaver greet Wally and Beaver after school with big wholesome glasses of milk and a plate of similarly delicious treats.

Those are definitely images that come to mind when thinking of cookies.  But in the Internet world, a cookie is something completely different . . . and it can have a connotation as good as these examples, or a completely different and much more sinister one.

In the Internet world, a cookie is a piece of information that is stored on a Web page.  When a user brings up that page in their browser, the cookie is automatically transmitted across the Internet connection and stored on the hard drive of the user’s computer.  In many cases, this is done without the user’s knowledge.

In a lot of cases, cookies are used for good purposes.  If you visit a Web site that requires you to log in each time you access it, you may be able to choose a “save password” option that will save you from having to retype your user name and password each time you visit.  This feature makes use of cookies by storing your user information in a cookie on your computer’s hard drive.  Then when you visit the Web site, the site will search your hard drive for that particular cookie, access it, and retrieve your user information to log you in automatically.

Another example of a good use for cookies is targeted marketing.  If you visit a Web site to buy something, that site may store a cookie on your hard drive noting what you bought.  Then when you visit the site again, you may see messages that direct you toward similar products you may also want to buy based on your previous purchase.

So it seems like cookies are a relatively harmless thing, right?  Well, perhaps . . . but the underlying concept that Web sites can store information on your computer without your knowledge or consent has raised legitimate privacy issues.  Some have developed scenarios where cookies can be used to provide personal information about a person resulting in negative consequences for that person.  CookieCentral.com has an excellent discussion of this on the page at the link above; granted, some of the examples are somewhat far-fetched, but nonetheless do raise issues about cookies.

So what’s an Internet user to do?  Probably the first and most important step is awareness.  Users should educate themselves about what cookies are, what they do, and then make the decision for themselves whether they believe that cookies are a good or a bad thing (or somewhere in between).

Once you’ve made that decision, there are software options for dealing with cookies if you choose.  Most of the major browser programs available today have features that will let you control the cookies you receive, allow them onto your computer, or block them entirely.  In the Internet Explorer options screen, you can click on the Privacy tab and set the options there for dealing with cookies; there's also an advanced option to give you even more control over them.  Firefox has a similar privacy tab stored in its options screen, while Netscape has both an option under the preferences screen and a separate place to set cookie options labeled a Cookie Manager under the Tools menu option.  All of these browsers allow you to control whether or not cookies will be downloaded to your computer, and if so, which cookies you will and will not receive.

Like anything else, cookies can be used for good or for ill . . . and with a little education on what they are and what they do, you can choose how you best want to use cookies to make your Internet experience more enjoyable.