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Home > Articles > One Smart Cookie: Learn About Cookies on Your Computer
| One Smart Cookie: Learn About Cookies on Your Computer |
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No, we're not talking about the crumbs that get stuck in your keyboard. Cookies on your computer are small files that remember actions performed on your computer while visiting a Web site. Cookies store information, such as your personal preferences, passwords, advertising information and interests.
What Cookies Do for You
Cookies have many helpful uses. True, "bad apple" sites can maliciously use cookies; however, this is rare. Most cookies help make your online experience the best it can be. If you delete or block all cookies from your computer, your online experience might be far less satisfying. Here are some benefits of having cookies:
- Maintain a customized page. Get a customized view of a site, instead of the same or general content.
Cookies can help personalize layouts and colors on a page, as well as show content that meets your interests. Sites that allow personalization on their pages depend on cookies to make them work well.
- Remember usernames and passwords. Cookies let Web sites remember usernames and passwords you enter, so you don't have to type them in every time you go to a site. If you delete your cookies, these sites can no longer automatically fill in the information you use at the site.
- Improve e-commerce. If you shop online, cookies are used to remember what you have looked at and what you have put in your shopping cart. If you don't use cookies or delete cookies, e-commerce sites might get confused or forget your information.
- Reduce redundancy of ads. Do you get tired of seeing the same ads? Cookies allow sites that show ads to count how many times you've seen them. After so many views, ads can be changed or deleted altogether. Cookies also can be used to block some one-time ads or services.
- Receive relevant ads. Cookies also allow sites that show banner ads to remember what your computer clicked on, and to get to know your interests. For example, if you look at Hawaii on a travel-planning site, another site you visit later can use the information to recognize that you might be interested in hotels in Hawaii and to show you a related banner ad.
- Get better product recommendations. Sites that make recommendations, such as movies or products for sale, use cookies to remember what someone at your computer viewed. Then, they can try to make useful recommendations.
- Help search engines make suggestions. Cookies allow search engines to provide type-ahead suggestions. If you delete cookies, these suggestions might not work. Cookies also allow you to view your search history. This can be helpful when trying to find a previous or similar search.
How Cookies Affect Your Privacy
Most cookies, despite some misconceptions, are legitimate files and will not invade your privacy. They are just simple text files on your computer that remember preferences you had on a site and act like "counters." Cookies might feel scary to some people because they remember your online activity. However, other individuals perceive getting ads targeted to their interests as beneficial, because it's better than viewing irrelevant ads.
First- and Third-Party Cookies
When choosing a privacy setting in your browser, two terms you might see are "first-party cookies" and "third-party cookies." First-party cookies are those cookies that originate from (or are sent to) the Web site you're currently viewing. These types of cookies usually will contain information about your preferences for that particular Web site. Third-party cookies originate from (or will be sent to) a Web site that is not the site you are visiting. For example, if the Web site you are on is using third-party advertising, those third-party advertising Web sites might use a cookie to remember your Web habits and to determine which Web sites you visit for marketing purposes.
Managing Cookies on Your Computer
To manage cookies on your computer, you'll need to adjust the privacy settings. If you have Internet Explorer 6, look under Tools, Internet Options and then on the Privacy tab for your cookie privacy setting. This setting is automatically on Medium for the Internet zone. You may increase the setting to be higher than Medium. However, for the most part, the default settings on this and other popular browsers are a good balance between usability and privacy.
To completely remove all cookies, delete your browsing history. This clears all cookies, along with temporary files, history, saved passwords and Web form information. In Internet Explorer 6, your browsing history can be found under Tools, Internet Options and then on the General tab. Simply click Delete to remove cookies from your computer. If you use another browser or have trouble deleting cookies, seek your browser's help section for instructions.
You also can opt out of cookies from Web advertisers by clicking on the site's privacy policy and looking for cookie opt-out instructions.
The P&G Policy on Cookies
P&G strives to earn and maintain your trust. We use cookies to monitor how our sites are used and to help personalize your online experience. For example, when you register on our sites, we might store a unique code in a first-party cookie on your computer. (We do not place third-party cookies on your computer.) The next time you come back to the site from that computer, our servers use the cookie to recognize your computer. P&G might use the information you provided when you registered, combined with your activities on our sites, to provide you advertising and offers of interest. We never store personal information in our cookies. Plus, we limit the collection of personal activity to what we need to know in order to achieve our goal of providing superior quality and value. Rest assured, we always will do our best to make your experience on our sites helpful and safe.
Source: P&G Privacy Statement |
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