Internet and cookies
To understand it in an effective way Assume you don’t know anything about internet, cookies and how websites work.
let’s start from beginning to the era where there was nothing at all.
Early-stage computers were large and immobile and in order to make use of information stored in a computer, one had to either travel to the site of the computer or have magnetic computer tapes sent through the conventional postal system.
In around 1960s The Cold War was at its height and huge tensions existed between North America and the Soviet Union which motivated the U.S. Defense Department to find a way to exchange information incase of a nuclear attack using distributed network. This eventually led to the formation of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network).
After the creation of ARPANET, more networks of computers began to join the network, and the need arose for an agreed set of rules for handling data. A new communications protocol was established called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP). This allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to “talk” to each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard on January, 1983. All networks could now be connected by a universal language ultimately
This was just about how internet was born we are yet to explore the websites and browsers.
The Internet was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.
Tim Berners-Lee, an English computer scientist, was working for the huge European nuclear research hub CERN. CERN researchers were using different computer platforms for work and they badly needed something that would facilitate data sharing among them. In 1989, Tim proposed the idea of a ‘web of information’ . It relied on ‘hyperlinks’ to connect documents together. Written in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), a hyperlink can point to any other HTML page or file that sits on top of the internet.
Later In 1990, Berners-Lee developed Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and designed the Universal Resource Identifier (URI) system. HTTP is the language computers use to communicate HTML documents over the internet, and the URI, also known as a URL, provides a unique address where the pages can be easily found.
Berners-Lee also created a piece of software that could present HTML documents in an easy-to-read format. He called this software a ‘browser’ the ‘WorldWideWeb’ (not to confuse with the World Wide Web). Later, to avoid confusion, the browser was renamed to Nexus. The first web browser was written on a NeXT computer.
The first website at CERN — and in the world — was dedicated to the World Wide Web project itself (here) and was hosted on Berners-Lee’s NeXT computer.
First Browser: https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/
First Website: https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
With world wide web internet rapidly got a fame which led more and more businesses to transfer onto internet including financial organization, entertainment industries, E-commerce applications to connect and communicate with their users.
Still the websites was not advanced. they were struggling to remember who their users were or what they did in previous website visits. Every time a user loaded a new page, a website would treat them like a stranger it had never seen before. That made it impossible to build basic web features we take for granted today, like the shopping carts that follow us from page to page across e-commerce sites.
To resolve this problem Lou Montulli at Netscape found a solution.
Cookie — a small text file passed back and forth between a person’s computer and a single website — as a way to help websites remember visitors.
Cookies, often referred to as HTML cookies, HTTP cookies, Internet cookies, or browser cookies, are stored on the user’s computer via web browsers. Essentially, cookies allow each site to recognize a user as the same person that has visited the site before.
In the early days, cookies were primarily used to enhance user experience by remembering login details and user preferences. However, as the internet grew, so did the ways in which cookies are used.
Types of cookies based on source
- First-party cookies:
These are set by the website you are currently visiting. They help the website remember your activities and preferences across multiple visits, like showing you links to pages you recently visited on that site. - Third-party cookies:
These are set by other parties, not the website you are visiting. They are often used by advertisers and companies to track your activity across different websites for targeted advertising, which raises privacy concerns.
Types of cookies based on expiry
- Temporary cookies:
Also known as ‘Session cookies’, that expire when you close your browser. They help websites remember your actions and preferences during a single browsing session, like keeping items in your shopping cart as you navigate between pages. - Persistent cookies:
These cookies stay on your browser for a longer period, even after you close it. They have an expiration date and help websites remember your information, settings, and login details for future visits, providing a better and faster user experience.
Types of cookies based on purpose
- Strictly Necessary Cookies:
These essential cookies are crucial for a website’s functionality. They enable basic features like signing in, adding items to a shopping cart, checking out, and making payments. Because they are necessary for the website to operate, they are exempt from cookie consent requirements. - Performance Cookies:
Also known as statistics cookies, these cookies help websites remember users to enhance their experience. They collect anonymous data on how visitors use the site, including the types of pages visited and any issues encountered. This information is used to improve the website’s performance and understand user interests for better communication and service delivery. - Functional Cookies:
Functional or preference cookies ensure that a website operates correctly and enhances its functionality. They remember user credentials for automatic login and site preferences like language and region. While they do not track browsing activity on other websites, they can be set by third-party providers whose services are used by the website. - Advertising Cookies:
Also known as targeting or tracking cookies, these are used to track users’ online activities and behaviors to build profiles of their interests. This information is used to show relevant advertisements on other websites. Typically set by third-party advertising networks, these cookies are often persistent and can uniquely identify a user’s browser, device, location, and browsing habits.
Cookies and User Privacy
As cookies became widely used by websites, there have been ongoing concerns about user privacy. These concerns have intensified as ad networks increasingly use personal data collected from cookies to target ads. To address these privacy issues, below data protection laws and directives have been implemented, which regulates provisions to govern the use of cookies and protect user privacy:
1. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
2. ePrivacy Directive (ePD)
3. California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
4. Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD)
5. Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA)
