Glossary

A cookie is a small amount of data generated by a website and saved by your web browser. Its purpose is to remember information about you, similar to a preference file created by a software application.

See more information about compliance surrounding cookies, and read our own Cookie Policy.

While cookies serve many functions, their most common purpose is to store login information for a specific site. Some sites will save both your username and password in a cookie, while others will only save your username. Whenever you check a box that says, “Remember me on this computer,” the website will generate a login cookie once you successfully log in. Each time you revisit the website, you may only need to enter your password or you might not need to log in at all.

Cookies are also used to store user preferences for a specific site. For example, a search engine may store your search settings in a cookie. A news website may use a cookie to save a custom text size you select for viewing news articles. Financial websites sometimes use cookies to store recently viewed stock quotes. If a website needs to store a lot of personal information, it may use a cookie to remember who you are, but will load the information from the web server. This method, called “server side” storage, is often used when you create an account on a website.