

To build a more comprehensive profile of your online activities or to target you with more advertising, websites may then track you and follow you around the web. The pages you visit and the transactions you make are remembered by Cookies. You will, however, accumulate a lot of cookies over time and this will slow down your machine in turn. On subsequent visits, it can load a lot faster instead of re-downloading the pages. The pages you visit will be saved on your hard drive when you first visit a website. Several cyber-crime events have shown that previous cyber attacks have shown that hackers can likely hijack cookies, access browser sessions, and then steal personal information.

A potential security threat to your personal data.

Here are some of the main reasons why you should delete cookies from your browser: While not every user walks in every day to hack into other people’s accounts, but, there are chances that the next person MIGHT log in to your online banking or shopping accounts masquerading as you, or worse still. Suppose you are going to use a public computer at a cyber cafe to shop online or a shared computer at your workplace to check an important email, but unless you delete the cookies that have been stored for each session, the next person who logs in on the system can possibly see your entire history. But you should know that if you choose this method you will lose the convenience of stored passwords and other data. Therefore, clearing the site-specific data can be a good idea to fix any such issues. It may also cause problems on some sites leading to loading and formatting issues. But to be on a safer and more secure side, one should ALWAYS delete cookies after browsing.īut this can pose a privacy risk as it stores personal details. This makes online transactions very convenient and internet surfing easier as you don't have to type your login credentials every single time you log in to a website. This file contains certain information about you, like your name, location, and interests. These cookies get stored in a small file, called cookie.txt. ‘Cookies’ are small text messages that the web servers pass to your web browser when you visit different sites.
