What website cookies are

What a cookie is

A cookie is a small piece of text a website stores in your browser. The next time you visit, your browser sends it back, so the site recognizes you.

The useful kind

• Necessary cookies keep you signed in, remember what is in your cart and keep the site secure. Sites cannot work properly without them.
• Preference cookies remember settings such as language.

The tracking kind

• Analytics cookies count visits and see which pages are used.
• Advertising cookies, often set by other companies, can follow you across many sites to build a profile of your interests and show you targeted ads.

That is why cookie banners exist: privacy laws in many places require sites to ask before setting cookies that are not strictly needed.

What to do

• Rejecting non-essential cookies is safe. The site still works.
• Clearing cookies signs you out of sites and resets preferences. It can fix some website problems.
• Be careful who has your session cookie. Some attacks steal the cookie that keeps you signed in, letting someone use your account without your password. Scam sign-in pages and malware do this, which is one more reason to keep devices protected and sign out of shared computers.