What is a browser cookie?

A browser cookie is a small piece of information that is stored for future use. When you visit a website where you have been before, the data in the browser cookie tells the website what you were interested in previously. It has tracked what you clicked on and information you may have filled in while you were there.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature that saves you time. Cookies are commonly used to store user preference information, shopping cart contents, and authentication data such as user names and passwords. It will usually ask you, "Would you like this site to remember this information." When you say "yes," it was for your convenience and you created a "cookie."

Example of Shopping Cart Cookies

I have browsed & shopped for books on Amazon. When I return, it remembers what books I had reviewed, it will tell me similar books of the same category, and when I go to purchase, it asks if I'd like to use the same payment information. These are cookies.

By the way, cookies do not "steal" your information, they only store the information on your computer for future reference and communication between your computer and that website.

Problems with Cookies

One specific issue has been if I visited a network marketing website of a specific distributor, the address would have looked like this:

www.ABCCompany.com/BeverlyFrahm This indicates a replicated website owned by Beverly.

Now, when I try to go to a website of the same company, different owner, it would look like this.

www.ABCCompany.com/EricJones  This indicates a replicated website owned by Eric.

If I have a cookie stored on my computer, it automatically retrieves previous information and keeps going to Beverly's website. My computer thinks that is where I want to go. When I delete my "cookies" on my browser, it finally allows me to go to Eric's website.

So, when you have similar situations, or when you enter information and you're computer keeps giving you something a little different, go delete your cookies. Make it a habit to do this periodically. Here's how.

• Click on Tools in the Menu Bar
• Click on Options
• From the Privacy Tab, click on Cookies to the right
• Click on Clear Cookies Now
• Click OK to exit.

Now, What is Cache?
(pronounced like Cash)

The cache is a temporary holding area that records your internet travels and stores images, sounds, videos, full Web pages, and items that you download during your visit. It uploads those items from the website onto your computer. They are placed in Temporary Internet File folders.

Now, when you come back to that same website a day or two later, instead of uploading the photos or sounds again, it has them in memory (or in the cache area). This provides a speedier and smoother display of the web pages for you, recalling the information from your local cache, or folders.

The problem is that when the cache gets full of these "temporary internet files" it will slow down your browser. So, you want to make sure to empty it regularly, similar to emptying the trash. It gets overloaded with useless information. Later in our intermediate and advanced online classes, we'll go through altering the settings of your cache on your computer's hard-drive.

In this training, we'll show you how to clear the cache, or delete your temporary internet files. If you spend a lot of time on the internet, do this weekly, if not daily.

From a Mozilla Firefox Browser 1.5.0.7, you would take the following steps.

• Click on Tools in the Menu Bar
• Click on Options
• From the Privacy Tab, click on Cache to the right
• Click on Clear Cache Now
• Click OK to exit.