While these capabilities are so common that they are often overlooked, many questions remain: How and why were cookies created? How exactly do they work? How is this information collected? What does this advancement mean for the future of the Internet? Read on to find out!
The Invention of the CookieThe idea for the cookie dates back to 1996, when a young programmer, Lou Montulli, developed the idea as part of Netscape’s e-commerce shopping cart. The tool was designed to communicate with users computers in order to determine which ones had been to the site before.
At the time, servers had trouble matching requests with user browsers. By understanding which users were new and which had visited the site before, Netscape believed that it could deliver a tremendously improved user experience that was both more targeted and efficient. The file wouldn’t be anything fancy, just a text file written in code that would be constantly updated. The term "cookie" was adapted from the computer science term "magic cookie," which signifies a short packet of data that is exchanged between two communicating programs. It wasn’t long before Lou Montulli applied for a patent for the cookie technology. In 1998, he got one. Within just a few years, Microsoft Internet Explorer adopted the technology, effectively making cookies a staple feature of Internet exploring. (Read about more Internet pioneers in The History of the Internet.)
Almost two decades after the cookie was conceived, it has fundamentally reshaped Web surfing for both users and webmasters. For users, cookies not only help make viewing email and purchasing goods online easier, they have been used to simplify virtually all login processes, such as applying for jobs, filling out forms and making search engine queries, just to name a few. Websites have also improved the quality of their services tremendously. Cookies are now used to help websites provide targeted advertisements - a tremendous revenue source for millions of websites. Cookies have become a great asset not only to buyers, but to corporations as well because the information they provide makes the exchanges between these groups more pleasant for both parties.
Realizing the utmost importance of user security, many companies have taken determined actions to protect user information. For instance, some Web servers have taken to sending cookies over Secure Socket Layer (SSL). The benefit of using SSL is that it encrypts the browser requests in order to secure the transmission over the Internet . This method has proved to be the most effective way to deal with the interception of cookies. (Learn more about online privacy issues in What You Should Know About Your Privacy Online.)
Other Web servers have also taken steps to revalidate users where sensitive personal information is concerned, such as passwords and credit card information. Sometimes these methods include having users re-enter passwords or enter security identification numbers for their cards. More broadly, adding unique information to user identification criteria, such as a user’s name or IP address, makes user differentiation much easier to verify and much harder to impersonate.