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- Cookies and Cash
No, that should be cache. Sounds the same but is spelled differently and means something entirely different.
First, let’s briefly discuss Terms of Service
But, before we get into our main subject, I want to briefly discuss Terms of Service or TOS. They’re published by all reputable web sites but are generally too long and involved for the normal individual to read and understand. Enter https://tosdr.org - a site which summarizes and grades web sites TOS. The site’s name is a take off on TL;DR which stands for Too Long; Didn’t Read. TOSDR doesn’t cover every web site but it covers quite a few and I encourage you to take a look at it and see how the sites you normally visit measure up. It’s also a good idea to check on any new sites you plan to visit or decide to make an account for.
Cookies are files that websites save on your computer. A site can store a cookie on your device (computer, smartphone, tablet, etc) for any number of reasons. The contents of the cookie can indicate that you’re logged in to the site. Or the cookie can save your shopping cart contents. The cookie can simply indicate the last time you visited that site.
Do you give your consent?
You’ve seen the prompt that comes up when you visit a site asking if you want to accept more than just “necessary” cookies. A necessary cookie might be one that indicates that you are logged in to that site. Some cookies store information about how the site is performing - the next time you visit that site, it can read that cookie and retrieve the performance information. Other cookies store marketing information and the next time you visit that site it can tell what things you’ve looked at.
A site, let’s say CNet, can only read the cookies that it has placed on your device, but the site you’re visiting (e.g.CNet) can have, in its directions to your browser, code to cause your browser to retrieve information from other sites (like an ad from Amazon). What you will see, along with content from CNet, is an ad or ads from Amazon. Since you are in effect visiting Amazon to display the ad, it can place its own cookies on your device. If there are other ads displayed, the sites that own the ads can place their own cookies on your device. Further, the instructions to your browser which causes your browser to retrieve the ad or ads can contain information that is forwarded to the ad’s site. So, if you’re looking at a CNet article about routers, the ad site (in our example Amazon) knows that and can show you routers the next time you visit Amazon.
The ad doesn’t even have to be visible! It can be a single dot on your screen. That’s enough to allow the ad site (Amazon in our example) to put its own cookie on your device and retrieve it later. And if you go to another site, like PC World, and it has an ad from that same company (e.g. Amazon), Amazon now knows what you’ve been looking at on CNet and PC World.
You can clear cookies from your computer and you can clear cookies only from specific sites. How you do it varies from browser to browser so I’ll let you look it up on your own. Do a search or use your browser’s help. Clearing cookies can eliminate those cookies that were planted for advertising purposes. A warning: you might be logged out of sites if you clear cookies so you’ll have to find your login information next time you visit them.
Cache
Cache is different from cookies. Cache is something that helps your device display information from a site more quickly. Your browser decides what to put in its cache. It can be any of a number of things but it’s often the contents of the web page or images that are to be displayed. Since the things in the cache are already on your computer your browser doesn’t have to go out to the internet to retrieve that page or image again and that speeds things up. Items in the cache will expire based on directions from the site you visit so you don’t really have to worry about seeing out of date information.
You can clear your browser’s cache, too. Like clearing cookies, how you do it varies from browser to browser so I’ll leave it up to you to find out how to do it for your favorite browser. Cache can take up quite a bit of space so if you find you’re running out of space on your device, clearing cache might help. Also, if sites are misbehaving, sometimes clearing cache can fix that.
That’s all for this time
I hope you now have a better idea of what cookies are and how they work - how one site can know to display an ad related to something you saw on another site. I also hope you understand what role cache plays in your browser. Finally, I hope you’ll check out https://tosdr.org to get an idea of what you’re agreeing to when you agree to a site’s or app’s Terms of Service. Don't hesitate to write to me if you have questions!
As always, my intent is to help you understand the basics and equip you to search for more detailed information.
Please feel free to email me with questions, comments, suggestions, requests for future columns, to sign up for my newsletter, or whatever at [email protected] or just drop me a quick note and say HI!
If you like, you can read my most recent newsletter in the Hillsboro Times Gazette at https://go.ttot.link/TG-Column - I should have that link updated shortly after this edition of the newsletter appears in the online version of the newspaper.