How Cookies Work - Do I have to Accept?

Some cookies aren’t delicious; they track your personal data. Here’s how to block them.

Care about your own data protection? You might want to avoid certain cookies. Not the chocolate-chip kind; the kind that track your personal data when you visit websites. Some website cookies leave your tracked information vulnerable for use in unwanted ways. Your information could even wind up in the hands of identity thieves, scammers, or other criminals on the dark web—an anonymous, encrypted part of the web inaccessible to most people.

Let’s take a look at website cookies: what they are, how to differentiate the good from the bad, and what you can do about it if they’re being used to track you across the web.

What are cookies, anyway?

Cookies are unique identifiers—strings of code called “scripts”—placed in your browser when you visit the websites of many companies and organizations. Some cookies help deliver a more personalized experience and “remember” you when you return to a site. Some, though, are more intrusive, and could even be used to hijack your personal data for unwanted purposes. Here are three main types you should know about:

• Functional Cookies – These cookies help companies remember your preferences so you can enjoy a more personalized experience when you come back to the website. They don’t collect your personal data, and they don’t track you when you leave one site to go to others.
• Analytical/Performance Cookies – These cookies help companies improve the way their website runs. They gather grouped data around things like the paths users take through the site, which pages are most popular, and how long it takes for pages to load. Like functionality cookies, they don’t collect your personal data, and they don’t track you across the web.
  
• Tracking Cookies – These are the ones you might want to avoid. Some websites use tracking cookies to collect your personal user data (geographic location, device type, purchase behavior, and more), and continue to monitor you even after you’ve left the site and started browsing others. Most important, the information collected by these cookies can be sold to third parties if the site chooses. While it’s mainly used to deliver more personalized ads, you might find that the amount of personal information gathered and sold is invasive.
  

A final point about tracking cookies: Cybercriminals can take advantage of them. They can use these cookies to harvest your personal data and track your interests, then leverage that data to steal your identity, create scams, or plant malware on your device.

Do I have to accept cookies to use a site?

When you begin navigating through a site, by default you’ve accepted the site’s use of cookies—unless you’ve gone to your web browser’s preference settings and opted out. Most web browsers are set to automatically accept cookies when you visit websites. You can change this by setting your browser to remove or reject cookies from individual sites. The catch is that it may affect your experience at that site. For example, you may find that certain features, functions, or conveniences are no longer easily accessible to you.

One tip is to first read a website’s privacy policy and then decide if you want to engage with that site. Ideally, the policy should clearly explain how your data is used, who it is shared with, and for what purposes. In the IDX privacy policy, for example, you’ll learn that we use cookies to collect non-identifying grouped data about how people engage with our site so that we can improve the customer experience. You’ll also find that we don’t sell data to other companies. Finally, we offer a cookie-control tool that you can use to decide which data you’re comfortable sharing with us.

So how can I keep companies from tracking me?

Given that disabling a website’s cookies via your browser settings isn’t ideal because it blocks all cookies from a site—including the “good” kind— what can you do if you don’t want websites to plant trackers on your device?

You can install what’s called a tracking blocker. This software scans websites specifically for tracking cookies and other tracking scripts, and prevents them from activating when you visit. As a result, the sites you visit are drastically limited in terms of the personal information they can collect through your online activities.

One example of an advanced tracking blocker is IDX Tracking Blocker. It’s designed to keep websites from collecting your data as you browse the web, helping to ensure that you’re not unwillingly giving away your personal information to third parties. Offered standard with IDX Privacy membership, the desktop version can be added to Chrome (Google) or Edge (Microsoft) browsers; the mobile version is available through the IDX Privacy app.

To sum up, you don’t have to eliminate all cookies from your web diet —some are actually helpful, and improve your online experience. It’s the ones that track you across the web, grabbing your personal data and putting it up for sale to the highest bidder, that you’ll want to cut back on. The best way to do this? Install an advanced tracking blocker like IDX Tracking Blocker. It’s a powerful privacy tool that stops data gathering before it starts.