Not mom’s cookies
Let’s talk about cookies. Not your mom ones — those were always good.
Well, let’s establish that browsing cookies are not always sneaky or inherently bad. They have a purpose: improve our online experience. They tailored your user experience and made it sort of unique. Some make it even faster. That’s good. And it is better as the Internet grows, and our attention and time decreases. They avoid us to repeat some actions because they have information about our previous browsings, etc. They don’t drink, but they know things.
Well, cookies itself do not know anything, they are just a carrier. They allowed the site to recognize you, and that will make some things more agile. Some of them are critical and you simply cannot use the Internet without their help. Others are not critical, and its purpose is just to understand your behavior. But the mask is always the same: customize your experience.
So what are they ACTUALLY? I mean, how they look, can I eat them, etc…
They are simply small text files. Just that. Most websites place them on your computer or in your smartphone, and this is the way they collect personal data. Usually they land on the browser or the hard drive. Cookies can gather information (some for a limited period of time, others not) about the use of a website or enable it to recognise you as a customer. For instance: you may select your country the first time you visit one site, and the next time the site recognizes you so you do not have to select it again). Please: do not think cookies are some kind of virus or spyware. That would be 100% not legal and even if it wasn’t illegal, it wouldn’t make sense at all to do so because that site would lose all of its traffic in days. In fact, in some countries law protects users and lets them opt-out (that is to decline) from the use of cookies on all sites from their website browser (and this could reach even more countries as the European General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR establishes). Let’s know more in detail of these guys:
First, we have session cookies. They are temporary. They recognize the user and the information provided as the user navigates through the site. So they retain information for as long as you stay in the site or until you close the web browser (then, they just vanish). You may already think they are commonly used on e-commerce websites and that is correct. In e-commerce it is vital to ‘read’ what customers are doing because many times we buy different things together (milk & books) or we look up for some things that we forgot one minute later and the site can remind us about that. And many other behaviors we have at shopping time.
Second, persistent cookies. These sticky guys remain even after the web browser has closed. They can remember login details and passwords. But they are sticky, not petrel: in some countries (UK, for instance) law states when they must be deleted.
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Third, first-party cookies. Those are installed directly by the website you are visiting (that’s why they are first-party. This is between you and the site you visit). They collect analytics data, remember your location, language settings, etc. These are necessary in terms of usability. But there’s also kind of a gray area: they stay there for functional reasons, but collect so much behavioral data that they get you as your mom.
(Yeah… I know. I’m being a little benevolent with some of the first-party cookies. They could be totally sneaky. From third-party to the end, cookies become more and more a serious thing)
Fourth. Third-party cookies (that is other sites and services). They are installed by other sites to collect certain information from you. Later they carry out research into what you buy, how much you spend, your behavior on the site. Some sites are very interested in your demographics and any personal data that could be related to the product you choose (you could be a fourtish woman but you are buying baby clothes. That make you a middle-age mom or a devoted aunt?. That’s what analytics will find). In other words, they help advertisers to adjust business towards the right audience target.
I bet you are thinking that you just go online shopping, browse a little, choose what you need/like, and simply buy it. Wouldn’t much to study or analyze in that. Well… no, you probably do not just go and buy from a site. For instance, how much time and clicks will it take you to buy that beautiful phone you’ve found on Amazon this morning? I mean that pretty Samsung you fell in love first time in the morning, but you’ve doubt, then you compare to others, still doubt, then you google again to find it on ebay, still do not buy it because you’ve got the phone that you are using to google just three months ago and it is not that old… so you’ve been doubting from that moment. Five minutes ago you received a 10% discount notification from Amazon to buy it, now you doubt less and now that darn Samsung is not only beautiful but also cheap. You go to Amazon just in case reading that ‘free shipping’ works like a spell and you finally get push to act… anything of this sounds familiar?. Of course, there is the opposite polarity: you see something and feel that unbearable fire inside you, next time you buy it. No thinking in no time. Impulsive, yes, but not less of a behavior because of that.
Point is: we do not go, search and buy. That reminds me that people who says ‘I’m immune to ads’, they feel strong, and resourceful (so sweet, isn’t it?). We do many things, and those things are analyzed so the e-commerce platform can adjust itself to you. Is kind of a dance partner that follows your moves to squeeze an action from you. Now you know that 10% Amazon discount was not a law of attraction (sort of a you have a strong desire and the thing comes closer). They know you were going back and forward so you probably needed a stronger motive. So they put it on the table, so you bite.
Fifth. Here we have the super cookies. They are totally independent of the web browser. They are kind of horrible: permanently stored on your computer, even after all cookies have been deleted from your browser.
Sixth. Zombie cookies. As if the name wasn’t enough, these flash zombies are really difficult to detect. Those guys automatically re-create themselves after you have deleted them (!). They are typically used in online games to prevent cheating. But they can always be used to install malicious software onto any device.
I do not know what you think but to me, by the third-party cookies this thing turns a little bit too much. If you think I’m overreacting, I understand. If I do not have the work that I have, I’ll be in the exact same position and I’d think if one person buys some ounces of Brazilian coffee and a cell phone on Amazon on a May Saturday by 2 pm, that does not seem that much of an issue.
Problem is that we are an open book. When a site gathers information, analyzes it and enriches that analysis with more data (i.e. more of our pasts visits to some related sites), we become more readable, almost totally predictable. Think this as if it were one neighbor who follows all your moves and is a little bit much interested in your daily tasks. I do not want to ruin your day, but that neighbor knows more of you than you even suppose he/she knows. Reason is very simple: we do not pay any attention whatsoever to many things we do daily. Sometimes we forget the details of what we did just one hour ago… But if your neighbor is watching you, that implies paying conscious attention. That only one thing makes him/her remember what you did. Study and analyze what cookies collect is not exactly as the neighbor but MUCH more: there’s time and math to analyze those moves, there’s previous data, there’s computational power, there’s other cookies that you do not decline in the past from other sites and tell us a lot, there’s statistics to dive in your behavior patterns, there’s… hope you got the point.
In the next story, we are going to walk through some things we have to know (and do) about that smell like home thing called cookies.
