Ad - Cooking Cookies
In this digital phase of life, people are influenced by all means of digital platforms. Whether it be advertisements, marketing, communication, etc., society is immersed in the digital world to a large extent. In all means of social media we are engaged by choices in accordance to our interests. Ever wondered about how our interests are being captured by these sites or marketing agencies? This remains a question for us. We still get carried away with these choices. This tracking is made possible by "online cookies."
Online cookies are small files that are sent to our browser from the websites we visit. In this way, our interests are being tracked by monitoring the sites we visit and the items we click on that page. With this product advertisement, articles of your interest are being directed your way and will make you fall more in love with these brands. Online cookies are formally known as HTTP cookies or browser cookies. Websites have now become more focused on asking you to accept cookies. This is as a result of the “Data privacy and protection law” which governs online data tracking and transparency. This data privacy law is known as "The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)" ,enforced in 2018.There are several type of cookies on the basis of their functions;
First party cookies are set by the sites visited by the user. The data collected with this is used for calculating page views, sessions, and the number of users. The access to data collected by first party cookies is primarily for publishers; then this could be shared with advertisers for sending ads. Apart from these, the analytical tools, like Google analyst , use these cookies to find users' interests and present them in tabular or graphic form for publishers' understanding.
Third party cookies
These are used by advertisers' ad servers to track user behavior and to create a virtual user profile. In a way, users get ads related to sites they visited earlier. This personalized advertising method is one of the most efficient tools for online advertising.
Session cookies/ Temporary cookies
Session or temporary cookies are cookies that last for a session. Session starts when you open a website or web app and ends when you leave the website or close the browsing window. They temporarily store the user's information throughout an internet session. As part of GDPR, session cookies are subjected to special status due to their accessibility. Normally, cookies expire based on the lifetime set for them, whereas session cookies expire when a user closes the browser. Due to this, they are also known as transient cookies, non-persistent cookies, and temporary cookies.
Persistent cookies
Persistent cookies are also called permanent cookies, or stored cookies. They are stored on a user’s hard drive until they expire or are deleted by the user. It collects identifiable information about the user, like web surfing behavior or user preferences for a specific website.
Secure cookies/ http only cookie
Secure cookies are cookies that work with HTTP/HTTPS and do not work for scripting languages like JavaScript. The main attraction of secure cookies is that they can stop theft through cross-site scripting (XSS), as it is only used in storing information and for hypertext transfer protocol requests and data over the internet. Exploits and hacks are made through scripting and are not able to access them. In a way, marketing campaigns of brands are created more conveniently as cookies make brands more accessible to people interested in the brand. With more personal and convenient website visits, they are, at the same time, a necessity for internet marketing and vulnerable to a user’s privacy. Session cookies expire automatically once you step out of the website, whereas other cookies expire in accordance to their expiry set on them, in the form of date and time, along with their names and values.
