One use of the cookie is to help your browser to select the correct area of a particular Web  site. An example of this would be the Roadrunner site. If you have not been to the site before, you will be taken to a page that requires input from you to determine which one of the Roadrunner sites that you need to see based on where you live. After you have chosen the state and then the city you are taken to the site of that city. In our case we would be taken to the Time Warner San Antonio site. After you have finished browsing the site and close your browser, the cookie is still present in your Temporary Internet files. If you go back to the Roadrunner site you will automatically be taken to the San Antonio site without ever seeing the page that allows you to choose the location. This cookie will be available to your browser until it is deleted or it expires.

Other uses for cookies would be to collect demographic information about the visitors to a Web  site. This information could be used to help the designers by tracking how often someone comes to a site and how long they stay. Another would be to monitor advertisements that are displayed as a part of a particular Web site. Often they will be used to keep track of what ads you have seen and how often. Some sites will use them to display a personal greeting with your name or some other seemingly personal information. This information is stored in the cookie based on data that you have entered into some type of registration form for their site. Shopping sites will sometimes use cookies to keep track of items that you have searched for or purchased and use this information to display suggestions for future purchases.

Cookies cannot be used to spread viruses or get files from your system. They are not plug ins or programs and they cannot do anything to hurt a computer system. They are simply text files that store information. The information that they store can be personal in nature but you, the user will have had to enter the information into your Web  browser at some point for the cookie to be able to store it. It cannot read the information from your hard drive to pass the data on to the Web  sites. Cookie will only contain personal data that you have given of your own free will to a Web  site.

There are six items that cookies can have passed to them. The name and value of the cookie as well as the expiration date. This date tells your browser how long this cookie will be active. The path and domain is the URL or Web  address that the cookie is valid for. The last item is whether or not the cookie must be used with a secure connection. 

You have the option to turn off or reject cookies from within the preferences of your browser. Internet Explorer 6, which most of you should have upgraded to for security reasons, allows you to have more control over which cookies you want to allow. When you come to a Web site that tries to send a cookie to your system, it warns you and gives you the option of accepting or rejecting the cookie. You can also choose whether you would like to apply your decision to future requests for cookie from this particular domain or just make a decision for the single cookie request. 

All in all, cookies are not a bad thing considering what we have to deal with. If you feel like you are being invaded, delete them from within your Temporary Internet files folder or with the Internet options. Use the browser to ask you whether you want to give the information out. You will never know when the cookies are coming without something to tell you. I use Internet Explorer 6 and have it set to ask me whenever a cookie request comes through. Sites that I feel need to store a cookie on my system get my approval and others do not. You have the same options available to you but you have to make the choice to use them.