The Yin and Yang of Life on the Internet
One more of the bastardizations of the English Language that have come about due to the ever growing infusion of Cyberdelic Culture into our everyday lives is the redefinition of the word "Cookie." Prior to techy terms entering our everyday lexicon, only diabetics, such as Yours Truly, every need fear a cookie.
Cookies are little text files that track how visitors got to a website; when they were at the website; what they did while on the website; and any other info the webmaster may think necessary to collect. And, yes, many websites do sell this marketing info to other web merchants.
So, at one time, it was considered best practices to frequently delete all your cookies. Purists, like Yours Truly, at one time, deleted all cookies at the end of each day. That was long before, however, we all had umpteen different web accounts; and umpteen different username/password combinations; and a myriad of different personal settings for each site. All of these different data points reside in our Cookies. Therefore, nowadays, deleting all your Cookies for most of us is just not practical.
Moreover, a Cookie could just as easily be helpful to you as you surf the Internet, or just as easily be harmful. Two personal anecdotes illustrate the Yin and Yang aspect of Cookies. Here is an example of a Cookie experience designed to be harmful to a website visitor.
About 15 years or so ago, when I had a semblance of a normal life, on a beautiful warm sunny June Sunday Afternoon in a LA beach town, the In-Laws came to visit. As we sat around talking, the In-Laws mentioned that they wanted to see Neil Diamond at the Hollywood Bowl. Their oldest son was present and he volunteered to drive and pickup his parents to and from the venue. There was one obstacle, though. Tickets were only sold online. No problem. My son who was around teenage years brought down the laptop connected to a 100ft. of Ethernet cable. Together Grandpa, Grandma, and Grandson shopped for seats. Good seats were still available. But they weren't sure. After 15 minutes of discussion back and forth, In-Laws decided to see The Show. Went back to the ticket site, and then
The entire section In-Laws wanted was SOLD OUT!
That did not make sense. On a beautiful sunny mid-June, Sunday afternoon, 5000 people did not buy Neil Diamond tickets in less than 15 minutes. THAT SIMPLY DID NOT HAPPEN! I instructed my son to clear all the cookies, since there were no critical accounts on that laptop. Then reboot. When the notebook restarted, the Neil Diamond fans went back to the ticketing site, and all seats that had shown SOLD OUT were again available. The Curse of the Cookie in action.
It can work the opposite way. Not that long ago, when Sears was still in business, I decided I wanted to buy a 3.0 cubic feet refrigerator. I didn't need it; but if I came across a super deal, I would take it. And I didn't want it delivered. There were several choices, but it boiled down to Sears or Home Depot. Each retailer's website stored its own Cookie on my PC. I went back and forth between several retailers for over an hour. When I went back to Sears for the last time, they cut the price by $50, and if I acted right then, there would another 5% price cut at checkout. So I bought the fridge at the new super price. The Miracle of the Cookie come to life.
In neither of these transactions, were there any human to human engagement. The two different pricing schemes were made by robots reading the Cookies. And today's browsers give users granular controls over how they might want to manage their Cookies. The instructions and images that follow are for Google Chrome. Microsoft Edge works pretty much the same for basic Cookie management.
In Chrome, you need to open the settings menu by clicking the "3 Dots"
control in the upper right corner.
Click Settings.
Click Privacy and security from the menu on the left.
Click Clear browsing data. The separate
Cookies and other site data is for complex web filtering. And beyond the scope of this discussion.
Click the Advanced Tab.
Choose how far back in time you want to delete the
Cookies. If you are using one of the shopping anecdotes as a model, the best
selection would be Last Hour, or Last 24 hours. Please remember,
any passwords set in the interim period could be deleted from the
machine. So be cognizant of how much time has passed before the
website data might have changed. Beyond 24 hours, and the results
might not be what you desired. Also, view carefully what is
checked or unchecked.
Once you have made your selection, Click the Blue Clear data button. When you are finished, simply close the Settings page like any other webpage.
You might want to practice performing this function using just an hour to become familiar with the steps and what they do.
Thanks to the more stringent laws in the European Union, there are now settings on most legitimate commercial sites that allow a visitor to have some control over what information is hovered up by the site's Cookies. Look for a link on the home page that says Do Not Sell My Data; or Manage Preferences — something that will lead you to believe this website will allow a visitor to control how much data is collected on any one user and how that data is used. The example below is from Akami.com.
Somewhere
you will see Do Not sell My Data or Manage Preferences. In our
example, we click Manage Preferences.
A menu will open that will list the the types of Cookies the website employs for data collection. As a general rule, all Cookie types will be active and collecting information on visitors. On our example from Akami, a plus "+" sign opens a detailed description of the kinds of data that cookie will collect and how it might be used.
I will turn off all Cookies except those Cookies the webmaster has deemed "Strictly Necessary Cookies." This is accomplished by moving the slider for each group of Cookies to the left.
After you have made your selections, click the Confirm My Choices button.
Not all websites will offer any control over Cookies, but most will. Some websites, like this one are informational only, and they may not use Cookies for data collection on visitors. The webhosting company does tracking of visitors to the website. So I assume that involves some form of data collection for the hosting company. I don't see that data.
I truly don't care if you want a new fridge. Nor do I care all that much about your musical tastes.
"And you would hug the devil if he gave you
cookies.”
—
Michael Buckley, The Fairy-Tale Detectives