Cookies Defined A cookie is a small file of information (normally less than 1K) that a web site, accessed by you, puts onto your hard disk drive so that the depositing site can remember something about you when you access that site, or in some cases other sites, at a later time. Typically, a cookie records your preferences when using a particular web site. Using the internet's HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), each request that you make for a web page is independent of every other request. For this reason, the web page server (the computer system where the requested information is stored) has no memory of what pages that it has sent to a user previously or anything about their previous visits, if any, without the utilization of cookie technology. The cookie technology utilized by our web sites deposits a cookie that normally expires within 6 months. There should be little concern about storing a lot of outdated and unnecessary information. You can view the cookies that have been stored on your hard disk drive, although the content stored in each cookie may not make much sense. The location of the cookies depends on the browser. Internet Explorer stores cookie as a separate files in a Windows folder named "\Cookies." Netscape stores all cookies in a single "cookies.txt" file. Opera stores them in a single "cookies.dat" file. Cookies are most commonly used to rotate the advertising that an internet web site sends to you, so that it doesn't keep sending the same ads again and again as it sends you a succession of requested pages. Cookies can also be used to customize requested pages for you based on your browser type, video characteristics, or other information that you may have provided to that web site. Web users must agree, in their browser setup, or manually depending on their system settings, to let cookies be saved for them on their hard disk drive. As a general rule, cookies help web sites to serve their users better and more quickly. On all of our web sites and pages, there is no Personally Identifiable Information conveyed in a cookie, and there is nothing transmitted to which you have not consented, and there is never any information externally aggregated or exchanged. Cookies do not read your hard drive and send your life story to the CIA. A cookie, however, can be used to gather more information about a user than would be generally possible without utilizing them. Remember, when you are visiting a dskinner Online web site, you are always in control of the information conveyed and the acceptance of cookies.
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