Privacy is a very important factor for users. When it comes to surfing the net, our data is not always safe. There are many methods you can use to collect personal information that can be used by third parties. On many occasions we see that when we open a web page the message to accept cookies appears . What is this really? Can you compromise our privacy?
Maintaining privacy on the network is very important
Our data has great value on the Internet . They can be used to include us in spam lists, send targeted advertising or even sell them to third parties for profit. This includes data such as our name, email, social networks we use, telephone number. There are many techniques they use to collect all this data . Simply by registering on a page that does not manage our personal information with privacy we can have problems of this type. Also in case there is malware that affects us, for example. All of this makes maintaining privacy very important. We must preserve our data, that it is not available to anyone on the network.
What does it mean to accept cookies on a website
This is a question that many users ask. It is very common that when entering any page a message appears that invites us to accept or not the cookies . It is a dialog box that can be more or less small, have a different color and adapt it depending on the site. But they all have the same goal. The web pages collect visitor data for statistical purposes, offer certain services and, ultimately, better understand who enters the site. At first we can say that it is not something that will negatively affect our privacy or security. By accepting cookies we are allowing that site to collect data such as the language of our browser, interests based on the location, whether or not our user is saved, etc. This also benefits the user to gain access to certain information or avoid having to enter the username the next time they go to access, in case it is some type of registration.
Among other things, they can collect information about our tastes. Let’s say we are visiting an e-commerce to buy a mobile phone. They may collect data about certain devices that we have searched to serve us targeted advertising. There are also analytical cookies, which are used to compile visitor statistics. This is something that helps those responsible for that page. Currently the pages are obliged to show this warning message , where they tell us that they can use cookies. This does not mean that it did not exist before and that they did not use them, but now they have to notify.
Are cookies bad?
You have to start from the beginning that there are different types of cookies . There are some that are stored on our computer, there are that are collected in the part of the page that we visit. Some are security, user, collect interests, pages visited, interface customization …
Many users may believe that cookies are bad. That they serve to steal information or that can access your computer when collecting data. The truth is that they are rather a tool that is present on the Internet to allow a website to load faster, avoid having to log in whenever we enter a site such as a social network, as well as maintaining the products that we have added to the shopping cart on a page even if we close that window.
Cookies are temporary files that can last more or less time. We can configure them, use tools to block them, delete them whenever we want … The problem can come mainly when they collect personal data without notifying the user. Hence, we have to accept or not when browsing a page that can collect them.
In short, cookies are very present in our day to day. By themselves they are not a negative for our security or privacy.