What is a cookie? A history

It is not a chocolate-studded biscuit that we are talking about. An Internet cookie is a small file saved on your computer that contains information about your browsing patterns. The main goal of a cookie is to identify the user so as to offer him or her personalized information or page layout. Unfortunately certain cookies go beyond this practical usage and allow ill-intentioned people to infringe the Internet user’s privacy.

Meanwhile, the browsing history is the list of all the Web sites that you have visited. This can be very useful when you don’t remember the address of an interesting site. But sometimes, it would be preferable to keep quiet about the sites you’ve been visiting… - such as the product page for a present you were thinking of giving, or the price of a weekend in Venice, etc. Why, what were you thinking of? ;-)