The young children’s song of “Who Took the Cookie From the Cookie Jar” is a classic nursery rhyme where kids try to guess who took the cookie as they go around the circle. Oddly enough, with the addition of data mining, computer cookies, and data caches we are back trying to guess who took our cookies and in this case our search history.
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So what exactly are computer cookies and what does this mean for our privacy? Whatarecookies.com addresses many frequently asked questions related to computer cookies and describes them as “small files which are stored on a user’s computer. They are designed to hold a modest amount of data specific to a particular client and website, and can be accessed either by the web server or the client computer.”
Cookies will record our usernames/ log in information as well as what we are searching or clicking on while browsing and then customizes web pages and advertisements accordingly. This is why you might notice the shoes you searched up weeks ago continues to pop up along the side of websites you are visiting or in suggested posts on social media applications. While it is very nice to not have to constantly log in to facebook and similar websites every time you visit the site, where my worry sets in is when I put in credit or debit card information.
The graphic above illustrates the distrust in our privacy and in no area is there more than 10% of the sample population that is very confident in our cyber security. I operate under the assumption that as long as I am online, privacy is not guaranteed because you never know who’s hand is in your “cookie jar”.