Page 265 - DCAP408_WEB_PROGRAMMING

Unit 11: Using Request Objects

11.3.2 What Information can a Cookie Extract? Notes

Cookies cannot be used to get data or view data off your hard drive. Cookies do not give anyone
access to your computer or any personal information about you unless you have given that
information to the website by answering questions or filling in a form. For example, the site
cannot determine your e-mail name or your address unless you gave it to them. Cookies cannot
give your computer a virus. Allowing a website to create a cookie does not give that or any
other site access to the rest of your computer. Only the site that created the cookie can read it.
And yet, cookies have a very bad reputation.

Loss of Privacy

The reason that cookies have gotten so much bad press recently is that cookies represent a
potential loss of privacy. Cookies, by design are meant to work invisibly. They are used to track
people and their activities and that makes many people uncomfortable.

Cookies can potentially be used to build detailed profiles of your interests, spending habits and
lifestyle. An innocent use of this information might be to target advertising campaigns to
specific groups or individuals. However, it is scary to contemplate the fact that some individual
or group might be able to accumulate information about our private activities and personal
preferences. There is a possibility that some unscrupulous group could potentially accumulate
such information and sell it to companies to be used for their own purposes.
Cookies are like a personal tag or tracer. Some people see this as the most invasive of privacy.
However, you must realize that every time you log on to a website you give away a lot of
information. Any website that you visit can determine your:

 Service provider
 Operating System
 Browser type
 CPU type
 IP address

Cookie Use is Something to Ponder

The main concern about cookies is that they work without anyone’s knowledge or permission.
Some people consider the use of this information harmless, but some find the gathering of
information in this manner invasive to their privacy. We, personally, do not mind the use of
cookies, but I fear that this loss of privacy, however small, may lead to more loss of privacy as
technology continues its onward march into our live

Task Analyze in a group of four that how cookies work without anyone’s knowledge or
permission?

11.3.3 Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Cookies

We used cookies in our application to allow us to store what the user has selected to be ordered.
We used cookies for the following reasons:
 The data becomes attached to the customer. If he/she starts to make an order and then
jumps to a different HTML document and returns later, the items that had been selected
earlier are still selected.

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