cookie: Definition and Much More from Answers.com

(′ku̇k·ē)

(computer science) A data file written to a hard drive by some Web sites, contains information the site can use to track such things as passwords, login, registration or identification, user preferences, online shopping cart information, and lists of pages visited.

A handle, transaction ID, or other token of agreement between cooperating programs. “I give him a packet, he gives me back a cookie.” The claim check you get from a dry-cleaning shop is a perfect mundane example of a cookie; the only thing it's useful for is to relate a later transaction to this one (so you get the same clothes back). Syn. magic cookie; see also fortune cookie. Now mainstream in the specific sense of web-browser cookies.

File or part of a file put on a Web user's hard disk by a Web site. Cookies are used to store registration data, to make it possible to customize information for visitors to a Web site, to target Web advertising, and to keep track of the products a user wishes to order online. Early browsers often enabled cookies to track which Web sites a user has visited and to retrieve data from other parts of the user's hard disk; current browsers prevent this and permit a site to have access only to cookies written by that site.

For more information on cookie, visit Britannica.com.

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