🖧Post 5: Let’s talk about cookies!

🖧Post
2/2025: Let’s talk about cookies!

Every
internet user has come across the pop-up asking for allowing ‘cookies’ …
without really wondering what these cookies might be, all of us blindly accept
the ‘necessary cookies’ while rejecting the non-essential ones and continue
our browsing journey.

Ever
wondered what these internet cookies are? What is their purpose? Do they play
any role in cybersecurity?

Let’s
Endeavour into it!

What are they: Cookies are bits of data that are sent to and
from your browser to identify you for that session. When you open a website, your browser sends
a piece of data to the web server hosting that website.[1] 

Where are
they stored: These cookies are in the form of ‘numbers and letters’ that are
stored in a text file as a ‘temporary folder’ on your computer.

Why are
they stored: These cookies contain information about the preferences of the
user and through this stored data, your preferences are matched the next time
you visit that website.

Remember
when you visit a website and it asks you for preferred language or background
or mode … and when you access that website a few days later,
it has the same settings you had applied a few days back? That’s because the
‘COOKIES’ you had given consent to, carried out their work brilliantly.

User’s
consent: As far as India is concerned, prior to the Digital Personal Data
Protection Act, 2023, there was no provision for explicit consent of the users
to cookies for the businesses operated in India, now with the implementation of
the legislation, a user has to explicitly provide consent for the collection of
cookies.

Now, we
usually see the following types of cookies in a normal disclaimer from the
websites we access:

Image credits: https://www.cookiebot.com/

Necessary
Cookies: they enable page navigations, access to secure areas of the website
and its usually said that ‘without these cookies, the website cannot function
properly’.

Preferential
Cookies: usually includes the preferences of the users while accessing that
website, for instance, the language or the mode.

Session
cookies (lasts for the session that is currently in use), Persistent cookies
(lasts up to a year, such as of Statistical, Marketing, Unclassified are some
other common cookies which are OPTIONAL in nature.

⚠ Where to be
careful-

Third Party
Cookies: these cookies track your browsing history information for advertising
and analytics so to personalize their platforms for you. These third party
cookies are associated with the advertisements that pop up during your time on
a website….

                             For instance: when
you have recently searched about home supplies, and visit some other page/website,
you will see the advertisements for home supplies on that different website.

These third-party
cookies pose concerns relating to hacking and data breaches, this is the reason
why the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have
mandated asking for users consent for all other cookies except the necessary
ones.

Which
cookies to accept?

1.    You can completely deny accepting
any of the cookies of a website, only issue here is that some websites might
not allow you to access their page unless you accept the strictly necessary
cookies.

2.      – Never accept THIRD PARTY COOKIES.

3.      –  Do Not accept cookies from ‘unencrypted
websites’ (the websites which do not contain ‘HTTPS’ or which are tagged as ‘NOT
SECURE’ by google chrome or those who does not have a ‘lock’ icon besides it.)

4.      –  Flagged cookies: Your antivirus
software or search engine may flag certain cookies as suspicious, you should
not accept them!

5.      –  Any site asking for personal
information/credentials such as banking credentials, identity proofs and other
such personal data… DECLINE those cookies.