HTTP cookie A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is usuall y a small piece of data

sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser w hile a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity.[1] Cookies were designed to be a r eliable mechanism for websites to remember the state of the website or activity the user had taken in the past. This can include clicking particular buttons, lo gging in, or a record of which pages were visited by the user even months or yea rs ago. Although cookies cannot carry viruses, and cannot install malware on the host co mputer,[2] tracking cookies and especially third-party tracking cookies are comm only used as ways to compile long-term records of individuals' browsing historie s a major privacy concern that prompted European and US law makers to take action in 2011.[3][4] Other kinds of cookies perform essential functions in the modern Web. Perhaps mo st importantly, authentication cookies are the most common method used by web se rvers to know whether the user is logged in or not, and which account they are l ogged in under. Without such a mechanism, the site would not know whether to sen d a page containing sensitive information, or require the user to authenticate h imself by logging in. The security of an authentication cookie generally depends on the security of the issuing website and the user's web browser, and on wheth er the cookie data is encrypted. Security vulnerabilities may allow a cookie's d ata to be read by a hacker, used to gain access to user data, or used to gain ac cess (with the user's credentials) to the website to which the cookie belongs (s ee cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery for examples).[5]