Cookies are small files of information that a web server creates and sends to a web browser. Web browsers store many types of cookies received for a predetermined period of time or for the length of a user’s session on a website. They associate contextual cookies with the user’s future requests to the web server.
Cookies help websites learn about users, enabling websites to personalize the user experience. For example, e-commerce websites use cookies to learn what merchandise users have placed in their shopping carts. Additionally, some cookies are necessary for security, such as authentication cookies (see below).
Cookies used on the Internet are also called “HTTP cookies”. Like most of the web, cookies are sent using the HTTP protocol.
Types of Cookies
Some of the most important types of cookies:
- Session cookies
- Persistent cookies
- Authentication cookies
- Tracking cookies
- Zombie cookies
Session cookies
A session cookie helps a website for tracking a user’s session. Session cookies are deleted when a user’s session is finished. Or they log out of their account on a website or exit the website. Session cookies do not have an expiration date, which indicates to the browser that they should be deleted when the session ends.
Persistent Cookies
Unlike session cookies, persistent cookies remain in the user’s browser for a predetermined length of time, which can be a day, a week, months, or even years. Persistent cookies always have an expiration date.
Authentication cookies
Authentication cookies help manage user sessions. They are created, When a user logs into an account through their browser. They ensure that sensitive information is delivered to the correct user session by concatenating user account information with a cookie identifier string.
Tracking cookies
Tracking cookies are generated by tracking services. They record user activity, and browsers send this record to the respective tracking service when they load a website that uses that tracking service.
Zombie cookies
Like the “zombie” of popular fiction. Zombie cookies regenerate after being deleted. Zombie cookies create backup versions of themselves outside of the browser’s normal cookie storage location. Sometimes Zombie cookies are used by rogue ad networks and even cyber attackers.
