Back to basics: what are cookies?
Cookies are small data files stored on your device when you visit a website. Different types of cookies serve different purposes, and they can be categorized as follows:
1. Functional Cookies
Purpose: Functional cookies ensure the basic functionalities of a website, like remembering login details, language preferences, and items in a shopping cart. These cookies are essential for certain features to work properly.
Use Case: When you return to a site and it remembers your preferences or keeps you logged in, functional cookies are at play.
Data Collected: Information such as user settings, language preferences, or session details. These cookies are often set by the website itself, rather than third parties.
2. Analytics Cookies
Purpose: These cookies collect information about how visitors interact with a website, such as which pages are visited most often, how long users stay on a page, and any issues encountered (e.g., error messages).
Use Case: The data helps website owners understand usage patterns and improve site functionality.
Example: Google Analytics is a common tool that uses these cookies to track user behavior.
Data Collected: Often data such as IP addresses, location, scroll depth, button interactions and session duration.
3. Marketing Cookies
Purpose: These cookies track your online activity across websites to deliver personalized advertisements or marketing messages that are more relevant to your interests.
Use Case: If you look at a product on one website, marketing cookies may cause ads for that product to appear on other sites you visit.
Data Collected: Information such as browsing habits, search history, and user identifiers (like email or username) may be stored.
In summary:
Analytics Cookies: Focus on improving the website by tracking user behavior.
Marketing Cookies: Focus on tracking users for advertising purposes, often across multiple sites.
Functional Cookies: Focus on enhancing the user experience by remembering preferences and settings.