Also known as browser cookies or tracking cookies, cookies are small, usually encrypted text files, located in your browser’s directory. They are used by publishers on the Internet to help users navigate websites and perform certain functions. Thanks to their core role of enhancing usability or site functions, completely disabling cookies may prevent users from using certain websites. This is how some sites know when you return and keep you logged in, or will display a particular page that you like. Often a cookie may be used to show some content only once – say a popup or popunder or some other advertisement that shows only the first time you visit a site and not every single time you change pages or revisit.

Cookies are created when your browser loads a particular website. The website sends information to the browser which then creates a text file. Every time the user goes back to the same website, the browser retrieves and sends this file to the web server. Cookies are created not only by the website that the user is browsing at any particular moment, but also by other websites that run ads, widgets, or other page elements. These cookies govern how the ads appear or how the widgets and other elements function on the page.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.