How Safe Are Cookies?

mundivagante

Grateful for some help in understanding more about cookies. I think I understand that cookies are placed on my computer by websites that I visit - session cookies help the website keep track of what I'm interested in on that website, and grant me access to different parts of the website without logging in again and again. Permanent cookies may be installed when a user visits website A - and if website B is cooperating with A, information about that user's browsing on site B will be passed to A "for marketing purposes". So, my questions are:

1. Can third parties (malicious or not) hijack other websites' permanent cookies, and get information about their users browsing interests?

2. Can third parties (malicious or not) hijack other websites' session cookies, and get detailed identity information about users?

3. How can you be sure that the cookies on your computer aren't reporting to unauthorised third parties - just rely on bitdefender, or what?

4. Who is responsible for policing cookies and information gathering activity through cookies - ensuring that they really do gather only the information they're allowed to gather; and ensuring that the cookies and information archives can't be hijacked by third parties?

Chesda

No cookies are safe. In fact, cookies are simple pieces of data unable to perform any operation by themselves. In particular, they are neither spyware nor viruses, despite the detection of cookies from certain sites by many anti-spyware products.

Cookies are in fact only data, not program code: they cannot erase or read information from the user's computer. This information can be collected in a profile of the user. Such profiles are often anonymous, that is, they do not contain personal information of the user (name, address, etc.) More precisely, they cannot contain personal information unless the user has made it available to some sites. Even if anonymous, these profiles have been the subject of some privacy concerns.

If you wish to block some cookies from certain sites just blacklist them using your Internet Browser Options. An alternative way is to block them using BitDefender; Privacy Control -> Enable Cookie Control.