Tracking & Plumbing Flashcards
What is online tracking?
Tracking is one of the pillars of the internet. It’s the practice of accumulating data on an individual based off of which sites they’ve visited and how they’ve behaved on the internet. There are several ways of tracking online, with the primary and most important being through the use of cookies.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small text file created by your browser and stored on your device.
How do cookies work?
When you visit a website, your broswer sends it a message known as a HTTP request. The website responds to your browser’s message with both the content you asked for and any cookies it would like your browser to save. Your browser saves the cookies and notes the domain for the website that they belong to. It then appends a website’s cookie data to every future request that it makes to that website’s domain.
What are main purpose of cookies?
Most modern websites use cookies for two purposes - keeping you logged in and tracking your behaviour.
How do websites use cookies to log you in?
When you log in to a website, your browser sends the website a HTTP request for your username & password. If this request is successful, the response will typically instruct your browser to set a cookie containing a long Session ID. This ID will contain your username and password and will confirm you are logged in on that session. The website saves the fact that it assigned you this Session ID, so when your browser appends it to futrue requests, it immediately knows and trusts you.
- User (browser) sends website username + password & sends HTTP request.
- Website generates & saves a session ID.
- Website responds with a cookie containg that ID.
- User’s browser sends session ID every future request to website.
How do website’s use cookies to track you?
