ABSTRACT
Cookies were once what children looked forward to with milk for midmorning or after-school snacks. In the world of the Internet, however, the term cookie takes on a whole new meaning. In cyberspace, a cookie is a small amount of information that is put on a computer hard drive by and from a Web site. Without cookies in place, each visit to a given Web page is treated as a unique event, with the server having no information about previous visits. Cookies store information about previous visits, enabling pages to load more quickly on subsequent visits and to appear with varying degrees of customization. The information stored is typically something about the user that the instigating server wants to remember for future reference. Once installed, cookies perform such tasks as rotating banner ads at a given site, customizing pages based on the browser being used, etc. Cookies are stored in various locations on a computer’s hard drive, depending on the browser used, and can be located by searching the drive.
