Cookies have been in use for almost forty years, but cookies as we know them today are tied to the worldwide web. When you think of cookies, you really have to think of them as small files that allow programmers to inject important information.
For example, a cookie can be used to track user behavior or preferences on a site.
Everyone, from a .Net development company to a lone developer coding in PHP, will be able to access and store information in cookies. Cookies as we know them today are domain-based, allowing only the corresponding cookie’s domain to write to the file.
Let’s look at the main stages in the evolution of cookies.
1. June 1994 Cookies to the WWW
Lou Montulli, a developer for NetScape Communications, had the idea of using the cookies for web communications in 1994. NetScape, at the time, was a major company and very innovative for the time.
2. October 13, 2014 Cookie Specification
Montulli worked alongside John Giannandrea until October 13 of the same year writing the first cookie specification for Netscape. Version 0.9 beta was a quick and easy specification sheet that allowed the use of cookies on the very first site to use them: Netscape.
Cookies were used to determine whether or not a visitor had been to the site before.
When the company displayed ads or other components, knowing if a visitor is a repeat visitor allowed for a high level of customization, which was not possible in the past.
3. 1996: Financial Times Article
The Financial Times released an article in 1996 that really put cookies into the public eye. Sites had been using the technology, but the end-user often didn’t have a clue that their actions were being tracked using cookies or that these cookies even existed.
Cookies were brought to the spotlight because of concerns that they caused a major threat to the privacy of the user. And in some respects, cookies can impact privacy because they can be used to track a user’s actions across a site.
Advertisers were already using third-party cookies at this time.
4. 1997 – Current RFC Standards
RFC 2109 standards were published in 1997 and set the standards for cookie usage. Netscape and Internet Explorer failed to follow recommendations on third-party cookies for years and that led to the existence of many of the large advertising companies that exist today.
Third-party cookies allow companies to be able to track an Internet user’s actions online to be able to display ads that are tailored to the user.
The Internet Standard, RFC, is a set of standards that were meant to help dictate usage of cookies and other elements across the Internet. A lot of browsers did not follow initial standards, so while potentially helpful, the standards did little to stop the abuse of cookies.
As computing power grew and websites started to need to store more data, sessions and other technologies were introduced as a safer more practical way to store user information.
5. 2018 – 2020: Do We Really Need Cookies?
Cookies have played an integral role in the Internet’s growth and has been a crucial way to track information. But every technology has its time in the sun before other technologies start to surpass it.
Sessions have long been the secure way to be able to store data when logging into a website.
Websites will store information in databases, they can encrypt this information and use it to store all the actions you take when visiting a website. Sessions are far more secure than cookies, and they have a wide-scale adoption that makes them better for the job than a traditional cookie.
Developers and companies have been asking whether or not it’s time to kill off cookies. While cookies may always have their place in computing, there are just better methods available. IndexDB serves the same purpose as cookies and allows for the storage of database records on a user’s computer.
HTML 5’s Web Storage is also available, which does have its issues, but the technology allows users to encrypt information and store it easily.
Cookies remain a vital component of the Internet in today’s world, but there’s a good chance that we’ll see cookies become obsolete in the next few years as other technologies offer better protection and more functionality.