What’s a cookie?

A cookie is a harmless text file who is saved in your web browser when you visit a web page. The cookie is used by the web page to remember your visit when you are browsing it. Many people don’t know that cookies are used since 20 years ago, when the first web browsers appeared.

What is not a cookie?

It isn’t a virus, a troyan, a worm, spam, spyware and it doesn’t open pop-up windows.

What kind of information stores a cookie?

The cookies doesn’t store sensitive information about you, as credit cards or bank data, photos, ID card or any kind of personal information. The stored data are technical, personal preference, personalize content, etc.

The web server doesn’t associate you as a person but your web browser. In fact, if you use Internet Explorer and you try to browse the same page with Firefox or Chrome, you will see that the web page doesn’t know you are the same person because it only knows about the web browser, not the person.

 What type of cookies exist?

  • Technical Cookies: They are the elemental ones and they allow you to know when a human being or a robot is browsing the web, when an anonymous or a logged in user is browsing and basic tasks for the functionalities of any dynamic web page.
  • Analytic Cookies: They collect information about the navigation type, most visited pages, visited products, language, etc.
  • Ad Cookies: They show you advertisements depending on your navigation, your country, language, etc.

¿Qué son las cookies propias y las de terceros? What are the own cookies and third-party ones?

Own cookies are generated by the web page that you are visiting it and the third-party cookies are generated by the external companies as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.

What happens if I turn off the cookies?

To understand this, we show you some examples:

  • You can’t share contents of that web in Faceboo, Twitter or any kind of social network.
  • The web site won’t be able to adapt the content to your preferences, as in the online shops.
  • You can’t access the personal area, as My account, My profile or My orders.
  • Online shops: It will be imposible to buy anything, you will have to phone or visit the shop
  • It will be imposible to personalize your geographical preferences as the badge or the language.
  • The web site won’t be able to make analytics about visitors or traffic, it will difficult the competitivity.
  • You won’t be able to write anything in the blog, you can’t upload photos, publish comments or rank comments. The web won’t be able to know if you are human being or a spam robot.
  • It would be imposible to show you sectorized advertisements, and the advertising earns of the web would be reduced.
  • All of the social networks use cookies, if you turn off them you wouldn’t use any social network.

Can you remove the cookies?

Yes. Not only remove, but also block them, in a general way or particulary for an specific domain.

To remove the cookies of a web site you must enter the browser configuration and then you have to look for the cookies related to the domain you want, and proceed to their elimination.

We are going to explain how to reach a single cookie in Chrome web browser. This steps could be different depending on the web browser version:

  1. Go to Configuration or Preferences throw the File menu or clicking in the top-right personalization button.
  2. You will see different sections, search for Show advanced options and click it.
  3. Go to Privacy, Content configuracion.
  4. Select All cookies and site data.
  5. It would be shown a list with all the cookies ordered by domain. To easily find the cookies of a single domain, write the url in the Search cookies field.
  6. When that filter is applied, you will see the cookies of the related website. Now you only have to press X to eliminate.

To access the cookies configuration on Internet Explorer, follow these steps (they could be different depending on the web browser version):

  1. Vaya a Herramientas, Opciones de Internet
  2. Go to Tools, Internet Options
  3. Click in Privacy
  4. Move the slider to adjust the privacy level.

To access the cookies configuration on Firefox, follow these steps (they could be different depending on the web browser version):

  1. Go to Options or Preferences depending on your Operating System.
  2. Click on Privacy.
  3. In History, choose Use a personal configuration to the history.
  4. Now you will see the Accept cookies option, you can turn it on or off depending on your personal preferences.

To access the cookies configuration on Safari for OSX, follow these steps (they could be different depending on the web browser version):

  1. Go to Preferences, and then Privacy.
  2. In this section, you will see the Block cookies option to adjust what kind of blocking you want to do.

To access the cookies configuration on Safari for iOS, follow these steps (they could be different depending on the web browser version):

  1. Go to Settings, then Safari.
  2. Go to Security and Privacy,  you will see the Block cookies option to adjust what kind of blocking you want to do.

To access the cookies configuration on Android, follow these steps (they could be different depending on the web browser version):

  1. Run the web browser and press de Menu button, then Settings.
  2. Go to Security and Privacy, you will see the Acept cookies to active or deactive the box.

To access the cookies configuration on Windows Phone, follow these steps (they could be different depending on the web browser version):

  1. Open Internet Explorer, then More, then Configuration.
  2. Then you can turn on or off the Allow cookies box.