What is a cookie?
A cookie is a harmless text file that is stored in your browser when you visit almost any website. The usefulness of the cookie is that the website can remember your visit when you return to browse that page. Although many people do not know it, cookies have been used for 20 years, since the first browsers for the World Wide Web appeared.
What is NOT a cookie?
It is not a virus, trojan, worm, spam, spyware, or pop-up windows.
What information does a cookie store?
Cookies do not usually store sensitive information about you, such as credit cards or banking data, photographs, your ID, or personal information, etc. The data they keep is of a technical nature, personal preferences, content customization, etc.
The web server does not associate you as a person but with your web browser. In fact, if you regularly browse with Internet Explorer and try to browse the same website with Firefox or Chrome, you will see that the website does not realize that you are the same person because it is actually associating the browser, not the person.
What types of cookies are there?
- Necessary cookies: Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
- Preference cookies: Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region you are in.
- Statistics cookies: Statistics cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.
- Marketing cookies: Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third-party advertisers.
Cookie settings for the most popular browsers
Below we show you how to access a specific cookie in the Chrome browser. Note: these steps may vary depending on the version of the browser:
- Go to Settings or Preferences through the File menu or by clicking the customization icon at the top right.
- You will see different sections, click the option Show advanced options.
- Go to Privacy, Content settings.
- Select All cookies and site data.
- A list will appear with all the cookies ordered by domain. To make it easier for you to find the cookies of a particular domain, enter partially or completely the address in the Search cookies field.
- After applying this filter, one or more lines with the cookies of the requested website will appear on the screen. Now you just have to select it and press the X to proceed with its deletion.
To access the cookie settings in the Internet Explorer browser, follow these steps (they may vary depending on the browser version):
- Go to Tools, Internet Options
- Click on Privacy.
- Move the slider to adjust the level of privacy you want.
To access the cookie settings in the Firefox browser, follow these steps (they may vary depending on the browser version):
- Go to Options or Preferences depending on your operating system.
- Click on Privacy.
- In History, choose Use custom settings for history.
- Now you will see the option Accept cookies, you can enable or disable it according to your preferences.
To access the cookie settings in the Safari for OSX browser, follow these steps (they may vary depending on the browser version):
- Go to Preferences, then Privacy.
- Here you will see the option Block cookies to adjust the type of block you want to perform.
To access the cookie settings in the Safari for iOS browser, follow these steps (they may vary depending on the browser version):