Third-party cookies

I am sure you have read something about third party cookies before, mainly because if you check your browser options you have an option to block those type of cookies. But first of all, let’s start from the beginning:

What is a Cookie?

A cookie is something to eat made with some flour and water and…. wait, that’s not what I was talking about. On the Internet, a cookie is a text file used to save some data about you in your PC by a webpage.

Why would a webpage want to do that?

Normally to identify you or to remember some options you chosed and use them in the future. In fact, lots of pages use cookies to identify you as a unique user and that is why without them it would be really hard for you to surf around the net, surely your email page or your favourite social network or online shop wouldn’t work.

But also, a cookie can be used to check your behavior, habits, know what you like or not, etc.

So, cookies are used to spy people?

Well, when surfing a webpage they can always make an anonymous profile about you and they do not need to use cookies for that, and also, the data you are giving them is the data you want to give them or you do not care that much about them cheking how you use their webpage. The problem comes with third party cookies…

What is a third party cookie?

A third-party cookie is a cookie made by another webpage different than the page you are visiting at that moment. A website cannot access cookies that another website has made, so your data is safe from being stolen, and neither can they make cookies if you do not access their page.

But nowadays sites like to place content generated by other pages, like youtube videos, plugins with all type of features like the “I like this” from Facebook or dynamic advertisements like Google AdSense. These companies can make cookies because you are in fact requesting something from them despite you are not navigating at their page at that moment.

And if they can track your movements they can know which pages you visit and you like, and all type of things that you may not want them to know. They use this data to improve the advertisements they offer you, and despite this may not sound that tragic, you may feel uncomfortable with the idea of someone making a profile of your habits.

But the problem can be worst if you think that, despite most of the webs will not know your real data, Facebook does, and Facebook has some plugins that people are using all around their pages to “share” or let you say you like it, just giving Facebook too much data from you that you may not like to share.

What can I do to stop this?

You can always block third-party cookies using your browser options, some does this as a default so maybe you have to do nothing. Be care of not blocking all the cookies, since the first-party cookies are necessary to surf normally on the webs, while third-party are useless.