por Among the bad cookie practices, cookie tracking is one of them. It can bother the user by recording all their steps throughout their life on the Internet, as well as the advertising that begins to appear in detail on each of the sites they enter. So that you understand what this practice consists of, continue reading this post about what cookie tracking is.
Cookies are files that you may have already heard about. You will also have seen notifications when entering a new website; They are always asking us to activate or reject them in order to continue enjoying what the page has to offer us.
Furthermore, we have been immersed in a divided conversation, where many people continue to repeat how dangerous or evil it can be to use and accept cookies. However, if they are used well, they can help us, whether as developers or users, to improve our navigation, data storage and page optimization.
To give you some peace of mind, we can tell you that cookies are not bad in themselves. A cookie is stored inside our computer and every time we visit that page in the future, the computer will send the cookie to the website. It is a good resource, since it will recognize the user who is browsing the web, authenticate them and allow them to pass without having to remember the login. Therefore, if we leave our cookies from a website on our computer, it will remember us from the last time.
However, cookies, like everything, can also be used to do evil, steal data or fill websites with advertising. This is what we would call cookie tracking.
Cookie tracking
The tracking cookie is the core or generator of problematic or dangerous actions for users who browse a website. Thus, we call cookie tracking the moment in which the cookies, previously exposed, begin to be used to track the movement of a user through different websites thanks to advertising technology, which is often developed by browsers such as Google.
This works as follows:
First of all, we can perform a search in the Chrome browser trying to research a specific product. This could be, for example, a hamburger. When visiting a different website, such as The Verge, we find a series of ads offering us various types of hamburgers. There we know that this and other types of websites use the technology of another website, which may be Google, to display ads and count users. This same advertisement may appear on another website that uses the same technology.
In conclusion, these other websites store a cookie that will help track users through more websites that use this technology. These are the majority, since they are all trying to adapt to browsers to position yourself better within the list of search results.
Below, we show you a graphic representation of how the tracking cookie works, which can make users uncomfortable with so much advertising:
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Here you have learned what cookie tracking is and how it can become one of the bad practices of using cookies within our websites, both for those who are starting to advertise, and for users who navigate through them with technologies such as that Google offers.
If you would like to continue exploring topics related to cookies, we invite you to review the syllabus of our intensive training in Full Stack Web Development Bootcamp, which will help you develop a career in web creation. Request more information and continue learning with us!