How Do Ecommerce Hosting Cookies Work?
A Home Business Article Contributed by Sharon Hill
Just What is an Ecommerce Hosting Cookie?
An eCommerce Hosting cookie, or cookie as they're usually referred to, are really quite simple. While they are one of the main concerns and obstacles in your computer security battle, they are also a very important ingredient in your ease in navigating the web. Folks who are concerned (or paranoid even) about PC security will tell you that cookies are these little Internet private detectives that web sites send out all over your computer from your trip to their site to find out what you're doing online. This is really not the case.
A cookie is not a program. It is a piece of text that an ecommerce hosting web server can store on a computer user's hard disk. The point of the cookie is to allow a web site to store information on the computer for later retrieval. The web site quite commonly gives each computer a name (or number) so that it recognizes all the computers that have cookies stores by its ecommerce host.
If you're nervous about cookies you can find the ones on your computer and see if any of those sites are ones you don't want having cookies. You're probably going to find, however, that the cookies filed on your computer are the ones that allow your ecommerce host to ease your access to the sites you commonly use.
Viewing Your Computer's Ecommerce Hosting Cookies
If you want to view your cookies you need the aide of your browser (generally Netscape or the even more common Internet Explorer.) Let's assume you use Internet Explorer and find your cookies list. Do a search for c:/windows/cookies. This will give you a list of cookies on your computer. It will show you a cookie name (which will mean nothing to you - it only means something to your ecommerce host and the web site that stores the cookie.)
Next to the name, however, is the name of the site that stored the cookie. If you're not happy with that site having a cookie on your computer then you can delete the cookie. Keep in mind, however, that each time you access that site through your ecommerce host server you'll again create a cookie for it. Usually you will see one cookie per site, but not always. And that site cannot get to any other cookies on your machine, by the way.
How an Ecommerce Hosting Cookie Works
When you ask your ecommerce host server for a URL one of the browsers first steps is to look for a cookie to speed up the process of sending the site back to your server and ultimately your computer. If you don't have a cookie, then the site you are trying to view has to create a new one. If you disable cookies, not allowing them to be used you sometimes prevent access to sites or at least pages within sites. Cookies aren't threats - they are shortcuts that speed up the process of your viewing web sites. They're handy little tools.
