What is a cookie? This post is suggested by Alison Cross over at paganmoontarot.com.

Cookies are little pockets of information that websites attach to you as you move through a site. These pockets contain info like which pages you have looked at, and how you first found the site (was it from Google, or did you click on a link from elsewhere?).

Cookies are the way in which almost all website visitors are tracked and measured. At any one time you will have thousands of cookies attached to your web browser from all the websites you have visited in the last 30 days.

Cookies also enable lots of website features to work properly. Here’s a good example that has just come up. If you vote in a poll on a website, that website will attach a cookie to you that says ‘this person voted in the poll’. This will mean the ‘poll’ will only display the results of all the votes, rather than letting you vote again.

Of course it can be useful sometimes to delete your cookies. If you want to do that, then read our post on how to delete your cookies.

Got a cookie question? Leave us a comment below.