Contradictheory: Who’s looking at you on the Internet?

Data privacy is an esoteric, faraway concept – until you start seeing strange ads pop up every time you get onto the Internet. Those of you who browse the World Wide Web may have noticed a change in some of the websites you visit: You’re getting to know your cookies. In particular, there have been more notices popping up, asking you what kinds of cookies you want and whether you want to disable them.

“Cookies” on the Internet are not the nom-nom-nom variety, of course. Cookies are little files that a website will give your computer to keep hold of. The objective of these files is to identify your computer so the website can recognise you when you visit it again. The cookies metaphor comes from the idea that your Internet cookies generate a trail of “crumbs” to identify you.