HTTP cookies, which you’ll also know as web cookies or internet cookies – are small blocks of data generated by a website when you’re browsing. These types of information may be stored on the user’s computer or saved onto their other devices until they’re ready to view them again. A cookie can hold information from multiple different domains; including storing things like records about what users add to shopping carts and what features they click during any given visit. HTTP encrypts this kind of sensitive data so no one except the intended recipient can see it – which means that whenever you’re done using your password when surfing around, it gets cleared out immediately without needing to wait around.

Types of HTTP Cookies

Logging in for every website you want to visit can be tedious. Authentication cookies are those little bits of text sent from web servers that, when received by your browser, make sure you’re logged in correctly. However, without this cookie data set up correctly, it would mean going through the process of logging in again each time you wanted to access a certain site. To avoid this hassle we encrypt our authentication information so no one but us can see it – we don’t want anyone snooping around! As long as we keep secure passwords and make sure our browsers are always up-to-date with patches then there should be nothing to worry about…right?

Tracking cookies

Tracking Cookies and Third-Party Tracking Cookies are usually used as a way to compile long-term records of individual browsing histories. This can be considered a privacy concern which led EU and US lawmakers to take action in 2011. European Law now requires that all websites seeking access to the EU market ask for ‘Informed Consent’ before storing any type of cookie on an individual’s computer or device.

Session cookie

A session cookie (also known as an in-memory cookie, transient cookie, or non-persistent cookie) can only live until a user finishes browsing the webpage. Session cookies are detected because they don’t have any expiration date set.

Persistent cookie

A persistent cookie reaches its expiration date. This time limit is determined by the creator when creating the cookie. For the life of this cookie, all of its information will be sent back to the server every single time it visits the website it belongs to or if it interacts with any content on that website from another website (such as an advertisement) . For these reasons, a persistent cookie may also go by ‘tracking cookies‘. These types of cookies allow advertisers to track someone’s web browsing habits over a long period – usually years – and use this data for things such as advertising purposes or logging into an account without having to do so at each visit.

Secure cookie

A secure cookie may only be transmitted securely. It may not be sent over an unsecured connection. Cookies are secured by adding the Secure Flag to them.

Http-only cookie

This restriction eliminates the threat of stealing cookies from a victim via cross-site scripting (XSS) or cross-site request forgery (CSRF). While it protects against these two attacks, an HTTP-only cookie can still be manipulated using server request forgery (XSRF).

Same-site cookie

Google Chrome version 51, introduced a new kind of cookie with the attribute SameSite. The attribute SameSite could be set to either Strict, Lax, or None. With the attribute SameSite=Strict, the browsers would only send cookies to a target domain that was the same as the origin domain.
With the attribute SameSite=Lax, browsers would send cookies with requests to a target domain even if it is different from the origin domain, but only for safe requests such as GET and not third-party cookies inside an iframe. Attribute SameSite=None allowed third-party (cross-site) cookies – however, most browsers required secure attribute on SameSite=None cookies.
The Same Site Cookie was included in a revised RFC draft titled Cookies: HTTP State Management Mechanism which updates RFC 6265 when approved.

Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge all started to support Same-site cookies. The key to the rollout is the treatment of existing cookies without the SameSite attribute defined, Chrome has been treating those existing cookies as if SameSite=None, this would keep all websites/applications running as before. Google intended to change that default to SameSite=Lax in February 2020 but given extensive changes for web developers and COVID-19 circumstances they temporarily rolled back the SameSite cookie change.

Super cookie

A supercookie is a digital fingerprint that has been created using HTML5 features such as the Canvas element and DOM storage, which can only be done by sites that use these features. Ordinary cookies lack this feature, making it harder for hackers to access them. To ensure security for both users and themselves, many browsers opt to block all supercookies before they’re created. Supercookies are usually blocked because they present a possible hacker issue or threat; however, blocking them isn’t always warranted. Browser manufacturers who participate in the Public Suffix List update their software regularly with new sets of valid domain names so they’ll never have older versions available – like Firefox 47 which blocks all Canvas-based cookies before they’re created – but those who don’t might still be at risk against attacks originating from particular domains.

Zombie cookie

A zombie cookie is data and code that has been placed by a web server on a visitor’s computer or another device in different areas than what you would expect to find cookies. The information can be found in various places, such as the local shared objects (LSO) of Flash, HTML5 Web Storage, client-side Cookies, and even server-side Cookies if it couldn’t find anything else. When one area goes missing it will recreate it using all the saved information from different areas before then.

Third-party cookie

There are many implications of cookies that need to be understood before they can be utilized properly. First off, while the original intention was for cookies to reach just the website they were originally set on or a site in the same domain, there is now potential for third-party cookies. Third-party cookies reside on servers belonging to websites outside of what you see in your browser tab – which poses an issue for user privacy and anonymity. There also seems to exist a form of advertising revenue because these types of webpages provide information about where you’ve been online; which makes it so much easier for advertisers to provide ads tailored specifically towards you- though this remains uncertainly proven by research at this point.

The next time you visit our site, we’ll set up a special cookie that says Hello! Remember me? along with other information about your computer so you won’t have to sign in each time. These temporary cookies generally expire within one hour or less of their creation, depending on how and where you’re using them. But if you close your browser and start it again before the cookie expires, it becomes permanent.
If you are seeing this message and aren’t having trouble logging in already, please enter the email address associated with your account below and we will send a verification email containing instructions to recover your password – because something might be wrong with what kind of device(s) you’re using or where you are trying to log in.

Browsers are notoriously careful about what information they share with other people or sites, but a change to this rule has recently been made. It might seem like old news at this point, but there’s a recent change in law for how browsers are meant to behave when it comes to cookies. As of June 2020, most current browsers ask you if you want to allow third-party cookies from websites you visit (think stores and services) which is pretty different than the past system that didn’t allow it without requesting permissions directly from those third parties first. Older standards urged all users, regardless of whether or not they agree with this preference now or not, to do so because it was the only way possible to remain safe. But newer models have expanded possibilities significantly – specifically noting that it would be alright if anyone wanted nothing at all.