What are tracking cookies?

Question

and what do they do to your computer?

Answer 1

They're bits of information that a web-site can store on your local machine.  They can't harm your computer (they only contain information that was put there by the web-site, and that web-site is really the only one that can read them with some secure exceptions.)  They're typically used for two things:

1) They maintain your state from visit to visit (so that you don't have to reset your profile from one visit to the next - which can be annoying); and

2) They allow websites to track you and keep statistics on you (which can be used for marketing or sold to companies looking for such statistics.)

Many websites will not work if you turn off cookies, and they really can't hurt your computer, so I'd suggest leaving them on.

You can see the content of cookies by looking at your internet files (if you use Internet Explorer, this is available from the Tools - Internet Options - Browsing History - Settings - View Files button.

Answer 2

They are little bits of computer code in small files that are stored on your computer by websites.  They are harmless except that they take up space on your hard drive.  If you are concerned about privacy, they also can used to track your usage of a particular site.  They are useful for keeping track of your preferences, or username, and such at sites that you use a lot.  You can turn them off in the security settings of your browser (or set it to ask you before accepting a cookie) but many sites won't work unless you have cookies enabled.  If you so a search on your computer for a folder called "cookies" you can take a look in there and see all the files, and open them up with notepad to see what's in them.  For the most part, they're nothing to worry about unless you have high privacy or security requirements.

Answer 3

All they do is store all the information recorded onto your computer from the internet. It does not do anything harmful to the computer. It is like a memory system, and it tracks your history of internet usage. You could even delete it if you wanted, and the computer will still be fine.  

Answer 4

Most cookies are harmless. They drop something on your computer so you can be recognized when you return to the site or submit a form. You can always clear your cookies or block certain kinds in your security settings.  

Answer 5

they are just normal cookies but AntiVirus/ AntiSpyware programs decided to call it Tracking Cookies

Answer 6

Tracking cookies are small files that web sites use to track where you go on the internet. They're generally harmless, but you should still probably rid yourself of them regularly if you're concerned about the privacy issue.

If you're using Internet Explorer, you can set your cookie preferences under

Tools -> Internet Options -> Privacy (tab)

If you delete their folder, I'm pretty sure IE will just recreate it anyway.

Important Edit: Not all cookies are tracking cookies. If you block all cookies, some web functionality will be blocked to you. For instance, Short-Media uses a cookie to keep you logged in between visits. This type of cookie just stores information about your login here that is only accessible by this site and doesn't do anything else (e.g. it does not 'track' you or do anything else you wouldn't want it to do). If you block all cookies, you would not be able to stay logged in here between browser sessions. This applies to most other sites you log in to as well.

Answer 7

Tracking cookies are normally placed on your computer by the various ads you see on the websites. They are relatively harmless like most cookies.

How they work:

- You visit site A and there is a Google ad on this site. The Google ad places a cookie on our computer.

- You visit site B that does not contain a Google ad. Google can not see that you visited this site.

- You then visit site C that contains another Google ad. Google can now tell that you visited both site A and C. However is can not tell that you visited site B cause it never had an ad on that site and could not see the cookie.

A few things to remember about cookies:

- A cookie from Yahoo can not be seen by another site (ex. Google)

- A cookie can not harm your computer in any way.

- Cookies do not take up that much space on your computer. (That MP3 you just downloaded is larger then the sum of all the cookies you have)

- You can safely remove tracking cookies when your Anti-Virus or Spyware removal program asks.

Answer 8

they can see what websites you have visited its kinda hard to explain really wikipedia covers everything to do with cookies heres the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

Hope this helps!