Cookies are short text files that are created by a web server and stored on your computer via your web browser (Internet Exporer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.). They are used to ensure that when you return to the same website later, the browser sends the stored cookie back to the server so that it can retrieve all the information it has previously stored for you.

Cookies allow us to distinguish individual visitors to the website and to store specific data about them. In practice, this manifests itself, for example, by having a pre-filled login name in the form – which you may have noticed if you use webmail like seznam.cz, etc. Your browser remembers it from your last visit). Cookies therefore save you time and make it easier to adapt the site to your needs.

The word cookie means round biscuit in English. Data cookies are meant to serve the same purpose as real cookies – to offer visitors a cookie to create a more pleasant atmosphere more quickly, based on the Anglo-Saxon custom. The name and principle of the cookie was invented in 1994 by programmer Lou Montulli – the creator of the now-defunct Netscape browser.

Cookies are also used by various web traffic statistics and other measurement systems that store the visitor’s identifier, the current time, where you came from, what keyword (e.g. after a Google search) in the cookie. They then retrieve and add to this data on other pages, which allows them to track users. From the point of view of the average visitor, it’s not a big deal, but for the website owner it’s an important source of information, because it helps them to determine whether it’s worth investing in marketing campaigns or seo optimization of the website.

Cookies save time, you don’t have to log in over and over again (an authentication cookie) whenever you click through to another page on the same website (applies to websites where you can only see the content after logging in – e.g. email inbox, e-commerce account). But they also play an important role, for example, when shopping in online stores (eshops) – without them, you wouldn’t put anything in your basket, or it wouldn’t stay in your basket if you kept shopping.

By helping to distinguish individual users, cookies help to a certain extent in the loss of anonymity. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they will save your name, email, address, social security number etc – unless you have deliberately saved them… In addition, modern browsers allow you to disable the storage of cookies, but you will lose the benefits mentioned above.