The name originates from the fortune cookies found in the chinese restaurants. A cooke with a message inside.
It was created in 1994-ben by Lou Montulli when he was programming the first Internet shopping cart.
The cookie (also called HTTP cookie, magic cookie, forutne cookie) is a quite often misunderstood thing. Some people think hackers, attackers behind it. Today 99,9% of the homepages use cookies.
Cookies are primarily used to identify your working sesseion which is a way for the server to notice whom is it communicating until you close your browser. Cookies are stored for the duration of the session of for a longer time. These data are typically what you have clicked, what you have typed in.
For those who are not experienced in informatics first I write what would not be possible without coookies.
It would not be possible to store that the user logged in.
After every interaction (click, button push) you would have to type all the data what was sent in. For exampla in your webmail application when you click "download messages" you should type in your username and password. When you send messages, again. When you order messages again, and so on.
It would not be possible to store where were you
If watching a video, it would always start from the beginning.
It would not be possible to put items into a shopping cart
Internet shopping carts use cookies.
It would not be possible to save forms
It would be quite inconvinient to fill in each field of a bulky form from the beginning at the smallest mistake or page reload.
It would not be possible to store personal settings
Some systems like webmail, viedo players, social media offer several settings. These settings use cookies.
What is actually a http cookie?
It is a small text file what is stored by your browser on your computer. This doesn't contain executable code. You can delete cookies or usually they expire after a time and beign deleted automatically.
Cookies are sent to your browser by the server hosting the visited webpage and your browser stores them. Later the server can read up this data when you are visiting the same page again.
