About Cookies

Cookies - Cookies are essentially small packets of information that web sites can leave on your computer to help them recognize returning visitors. When you go to another page on the same site, they give the site information about what you were doing before. Here are a few basic examples of how cookies are used.

• After you've logged into a site, they keep track of the fact that you're logged in to the site and what username you're logged in as.
• It lets a web site owner see what path people typically take to read the information on the site so they can improve the flow of the site.
• On big sites like Yahoo, MSN, or Google that offer many different kinds of services, it lets you log in once on one part of the site and stay logged in no matter where you go within that site.

Cookies provide users with conveniences, such as not having to log into informational sites on every visit. Cookies also allow companies to track your usage patterns on their sites and show ads that will be most effective. Therefore, some people see cookies as a potential invasion of privacy. It's up to each individual to decide what level of privacy is acceptable.

Theoretically, a cookie can only be seen by one web site - the site that set the cookie. In practice however, advertisers are able to use the images on a web site to track your activities on the web across many different web sites. For example, suppose you go to a search engine and search for kosher pickles. The search engine might use cookies to keep track of your preferences (preferred language, number of results, etc.). If that search engine displays banner ads provided by a third-party company, those banner ads might set their own cookies which take note that you were searching for kosher pickles. Next time you came back to that search engine, or perhaps even a different web site that uses the same banner advertising company, you might see ads for kosher pickles, pickled herring, or kosher meats.