When we visit a web site, it collects the information about us. They do this purely for the commercial reasons. They collect the information by keeping the log of the sites you visits and gets an idea about the personal preferences of the visitor.
A cookie is a small file containing an identity code. When the user visits the site next time the cookie is read and the site could show the content according to the user preference. Generally a cookie is of size 4k, when the cookie is of larger size it is stored in the server side. It is a practice leading to privacy implications but most sites including search engines sends cookies.
Mostly cookies does not contain name and other personal information. The majority of the sites are sensitive enough to your privacy needs and does not reveal the information to anybody else. But the problem is if any of the employee or a hacker hakes the information. If any user want to delete the cookies it can be done manually by clicking on corresponding browser option.
A user can inspect the cookies by doing a manual search on computer with name 'cookie' or 'cookies'. For example if a user is on windows O/S and using IE then cookies can be searched manually in the folder C:\Windows\Cookies or C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.
Most common details a website can find about the user are:
- IP Address.
- Referring Page.
- Browser and Operating system.
- Pages visited.
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