COOKIES, PRIVACY AND CYBER SECURITY
INTRODUCTION
Cookies are small text files that reside on your computer, and the information they contain is set and accessed by the servers of the websites that you visit. Cookies allow servers to identify you and remember things about you.
Privacy includes your personal information- your personal data, medical history, your passwords to your computers, cell phones and bank accounts. It also includes your personal life- your life and daily activities and relationships and your conversations online.
How cookies can be a threat to privacy: Cookies do not act maliciously on computer systems. They are merely text files that can be deleted at any time – they are not plug ins nor are they programs. Cookies cannot be used to spread viruses and they cannot access your hard drive. This does not mean that cookies are not relevant to a user’s privacy and anonymity on the Internet. Cookies cannot read your hard drive to find out information about you; however, any personal information that you give to a Web site, including credit card information, will most likely be stored in a cookie unless you have turned off the cookie feature in your browser. In only this way are cookies a threat to privacy. The cookie will only contain information that you freely provide to a Web site.