a small file that is placed on your computer by a website you have visited

a small text file created by a web site on your computer hard drive that contains unique information the site can use to track such things as your business name and registry number

a tiny, plain text file that counts the number of unique visitors and what web sites they came from

The cookie file is a file that resides on the client machine. It contains data passed from websites, so that websites can communicate with this file when the same client returns. The website only has access to the part of the cookie file that represents the interaction with that particular website. Clearly the cookie file has caused some issues with respect to privacy. Considering that as consumers, we do not know what information is being stored in the file, we should become concerned! The cookie file was first developed in order to help sites with the transaction process of the web. Without a cookie file, websites are not able to track a single user's path through a website, thus a transaction that required multiple pages (as most do) would simply not be workable.

n The file (usually in your browser's directory structure) where cookies are kept.