You may have noticed that when you logon to some sites, the site seems to learn your browsing habits and makes recommendations based on your browsing history. For instance, if you have been searching for a phone on Jumia, you’ll start getting a lot of recommendations on mobile phones from that site and many other sites. How do they do it? One way is by using cookies. Cookies are small text files stored in a web user’s browser directory or data folder. Ecommerce websites place cookies on visitor’s browsers to retain login credentials, identify customers, and provide a customized experience. Without cookies, login credentials would have to be entered between before every product added to cart or wish list. Cookies enable and improve: customer log-in, persistent shopping carts, wish lists, product recommendations, custom user interfaces (i.e. “welcome back, steve”) and retaining customer address and payment information.
So cookies make our lives better on the internet. Say for instance on YouTube, if you are a football fan like myself you’ll get Youtube recommend football related videos. This also goes for pornsites like Redtube and Xvideos, if you are a fan of bondange, you’ll find a site recommending bondange videos. This enhances your experience on the particular site. The things that you have no interest in will never be recommended. For instance, I hate rugby and you’ll never catch me watching anything rugby related, therefore all rugby videos are hidden from my YouTube home page.
It is all fun and games until someone else uses your phone/computer. Say for instance you have been searching for a phone on Jumia and then someone else uses your gadget to search for let’s say bras or dresses. From then on, you’ll be getting recommendations on dresses and bras which you have zero interest in. Same goes for your preferences on other sites like video sites and porn sites. The bad news is that there is no way out. The only solution is to clear the cookies which in deletes all your data and limits your experience on the particular site.
