Cookies are small text files, held in a special location, that can be written or read by small programs (called scripts) that are included in web pages that you view. Cookies are actually a security measure, designed to allow these scripts to store information between one visit to a site and the next, without having to allow the scripts to read or write the rest of your hard disk.
There are two types of cookie - temporary and persistent.
Temporary cookies are always deleted whenever you exit from your browser - they are used to store very short term information, such as security information so that you do not have to individually log in to every secure page you visit on a given site.
Persistent cookies are stored on your hard disk when you exit from your browser.
Cookies represent no security risk to your computer, personal information, or the information or files held on your computer. Any information that a script can write to a cookie could just as easily be sent directly to the server.
Information held in cookies for one site cannot be read by another site.
A specific weakness reported early in 2000 was that it was possible to artificially construct a cookie with a malformed site name that could be read on certain other sites. It formed a mechanism by which multiple sites could deliberately illegally share a set of cookies. It did not imply any general weakness in the cookie security mechanisms, and did not allow them to read or write the rest of the cookies on client systems.
We are aware of no mechanism by which any other site can read or write to the cookies we place on your system.
Cookies DO make it easier for certain site owners (shopping sites for example) to track your browsing patterns on their site from one visit to the next. You may consider this an invasion of privacy. However, please remember that it only simplifies the tracking - they can track you whether you have cookies installed or not.
Cookies are very small (a cookie cannot use more than 4KB of disk space), and
your browser has built-in limits on how many cookies it will allow before
deleting the old ones and re-using the disk space. Cookies cannot go wild
and eat up your disk space!
Lexcentrics Ltd specialises in the supply of word games and puzzles - in paper or online - for business use. For more details, see our Business-To-Business site. Copyright (C) 2000-2006 Lexcentrics Ltd