Information about cookies

Cookies facilitate certain features that can make the Internet experience more convenient and valuable for Web users.

A "cookie" is a small piece of information that a Web site can store on your computer. This enables your browser to retain some specific information which the Web site can later retrieve. As you browse the Web, some cookies are "set" on your Web browser. When you close your browser, some cookies are stored in your computer's memory in a cookie file, while some expire, or disappear. All cookies have expiration dates. The cookie is set on a particular browser on a particular computer, so when you use a different computer, the cookie will not exist.

Cookies are used, for example, when a browser stores your password to a particular site so that you do not have to input it every time you visit. Cookies are also used to store preferences you express for information that is then aggregated and presented to you. Instances where cookies are most commonly used include:

Ordering Online

Online ordering systems can use cookies that remember what a person wants to buy. Cookies enable users to keep browsing and adding to their "shopping cart". They can even end a browser session, come back, and still have the same items in their cart from the last session.

Registering Online

If you decide to register for an informational site, such as a newspaper, periodical or an special-interest group site, or even a chat group or on-line community, you will likely be asked to supply some information about yourself. Often cookies are used so that you do not have to identify yourself every time you re-enter the site.

Site Personalization

Cookies allow users to indicate what types of information they are interested in receiving when they visit a particular site. Users can then view only what they are interested in and not waste time with news or information of no interest to them.

Web Site Tracking

Tracking allows site owners to find out what pages visitors access, to interpret or infer what interests them. This helps the owners of sites keep their content fresh and relevant.

Targeted Marketing

Cookies can be used to build a profile of what parts of a particular site you visit. This information is then used to target advertising that might be of interest to you. Some sites use cookies to "remember" which advertisements were sent to you, so that you do not see the same ones over and over again.

Security

Cookies cannot be used to obtain data from your hard drive, get your e-mail address or steal sensitive or personal information about you. The only way that any private information could be part of your cookie file would be if you personally gave that information to a Web site. Also, each cookie can only be read by the Web site that set it, so unauthorized sites cannot view or steal the information in a cookie that you have previously accepted.

Note also that computer viruses are not passed through the setting or use of cookies.

If you, as a visitor, want to disallow cookies, you can do so on your Web browser.