How does the cookies on this machine work?

[eskimo]

What are cookies and how do they work? 

[Pinotage]

They are a tiny text file. Open Windows Explorer and find a folder called Cookies. This contains your cookies, look down and you'll find a file called something like your name followed by @answerbank.co.txt, open that with Notepad and you'll see there's one line of numbers and text.

 

When you go to Answerbank it looks for that cookie file, and from that it can identify you, and log you in so you don't have to put in your username and password.

 

If you delete the file, then next time you come to this site you'll have to logon again. They save time and effort, but if you use a shared machine anyone else coming to this site will be logged on with your user name

[Joanne-G]

As Pinotage says they are a small text based file that can be opened in notepad.

They are created by scripting in a webpage (php,javascript, ASP etc.) and each time you visit the domain that created that particular cookie they can see their cookie that they created and use it for storing such data as usernames/passwords, number of times you visit the site, shopping trolleys on e-commerce sites.

 Despite many 'puter users concerns, cookies are not visible to another domain so a cookie created by a site at fred.com can't be read by a site at john.com so your passwords/usernames etc are safe in that respect.

If your 'puter is not virus/trojan protected some virus' and trojans can read your cookies and send their content back to the virus/trojan maker.

[eskimo]

Thank you to all who replied.  I finally found them and carried out the advice given.

Happy New Year!