cookie
| On the World Wide Web, a short piece of text that a Web site stores in the user's computer, in a Cookies folder or a cookie.txt file, either for tracking or configuration purposes, for example, to gather information about individuals and improve the targeting of advertisements. Cookies can also store user preferences and passwords. |
| Special instructions are issued to the browser by the server when data held in a cookie is required. The transaction is a hidden one, with the recipient often unaware that the cookie has been delivered or accessed. Later versions of browsers allow the user to block acceptance of cookies. However, some Web sites will not admit surfers who will not accept a cookie file. |
| Cookies are derived from ‘magic cookies’, the identification tokens used by some Unix systems. |
| Originally, a cookie was an aphorism or short, witty saying obtained by typing ‘cookie’ at a computer's main system prompt. A cookie was then chosen at random – like a ‘fortune cookie’ – from a database called a ‘cookie file’. |
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