Cookies are nothing but small text files that are usually stored on the user computer hard-disk.

The main
idea behind the creation of computer cookies was to make online interactions more comfortable and
easy for the user. These are created automatically when a user visits a website that usually generates
and uses cookies for a better user experience. These text files contain information about the user’s
machine, it usually generates a unique id for the user and the name of the website user visited, and the
whole information is typically stored in the format of the “name-value” pair. In most of the websites
today, there are so many customizations available for the user to redesign the look of a website
according to his/her own choice and also websites that usually require sensitive information like name,
password, phone number, etc., to log-in to their website are also stored in cookies, but this information
is not stored in the user computer hard-disk typically these are stored in website’s server to keep
interactions simple and fast whenever user revisits their website, and also to avoid further interruptions
even if the user deletes or cookie is missed in user machine.

In the modern world, the privacy of an individual is at stake so are cookies one of them which can lead
to leak the sensitive information of an individual? The answer is very simple though cookies contain very
minimal information about users it is possible to track user interactions and sensitive information that is
given by the user. It depends on the websites’ privacy policy; usually, the user agrees to conditions
whenever he/she registers on any website so, if that website owner wants to share user information to
a third-party they can do that without the user's concern. Cookies are often sold by companies to
advertising agencies to help them for portraying their products to the user according to his/her choice
so, cookies don’t have the capability to spy user interactions over the internet until they were shared by
the websites.

There are usually three types of cookies session cookies, persistent cookies and lastly third-party
cookies. Each individual cookie has its own behavior. Session cookies are usually created when a user
visits a website and will be deleted once the session expires. A persistent cookie typically stored in hard-
disk for the long span to avoid disturbances in user preferences of a website. Lastly, third-party cookies
are responsible and act as spyware cookies because these were shared with advertisers by the
companies it contains all user information and preferences.

To protect privacy online, every individual must learn about blocking and deleting cookies regularly from
the computer. Session cookies are necessary for any website and even user deletes them they were
automatically created by the website, on the other hand, persistent cookies are user’s choice whether to
block or not, but third-party cookies must be blocked in order to stop the tracking the user privacy. So, it
depends on the user’s choice whether to keep cookies or not on their computer.

https://www.allaboutcookies.org/cookies/

https://crusolutions.com/blog/how-types-of-computer-cookies-affect-your-online-privacy/