What are Cookies?

Cookies are pieces of information that a website asks your web browser to remember. That information may be remembered for a long time, or just for a day.
There are many uses for cookies. A website might ask your browser to store the fact that you visited it on a particular date, then next time you go back the website can show you what has happened since your last visit. Sometimes a website will use a cookie to store your name, so the next time you return it can greet you like an old friend, or save you the trouble of keying it again.
With regard to your privacy, the computer or server that sends you a cookie doesn't know anything about you as an individual. A cookie file is not a secret way for a website to find out everything about you and what you have on your hard drive. Cookies just enable sites to remember what it is they know about you from information you have already provided.
Different browsers handle cookies in different ways. If you're using Internet Explorer, then in your Windows directory there is a directory called Cookies. All the cookies your browser has ever been asked to store are kept in there. While it's not recommended that you edit these files, you can certainly look at them to see what is stored there. If you don't like what you see you may remove it. Remember, next time you visit any of the sites that have asked your browser to remember things, those details will have been lost.

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