Quote Originally Posted by friscofrankie View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Milkman
Wiki CMN, but I still don't get it
Sheesh!
Cookies are small bits of data about your preferences, when you last visited or any other data a website might want to retrieve on your next visit. If you remain logged in to any services like Yahoo or gmail or TD your user name and password are saved in cookies. Most major sites save this information encrypted but it is up to the developer of the site to ensure that is is encrypted. This data is saved on your computer in an area dependent on the browser & OS you are using to be retrieved when you load the site or access certain areas of a site.

Cookies can be set to expire at the end of a session (until you close your browser) or for varying lengths of time. Not only authentication data is saved in cookies but many times site preferences (such as language, search filters, currency or any number of things). Cookies can help you when you use a site often but man ysites set cookies that have little effect on your browsing experience but may identify you as a returning user or your most used functions on a site, etc.

BTW ~
vBulletin MD5 encrypts your passowrd twice using a unique seed (or salt) before storing your password in a cookie. It does not save your username in clear text either but rather a unique identifier (uid). The reason you will have a "Posts Since Your Last visit" section if you look at "New Posts" is because your last visit is saved in a cookie. Cookies are cool, But I clear out those that I don't recognize from time to time.

Cookies cannot send data unless you go to the site that set them. They do not reside on system to beam messages across the net, they are simply a way to store data for wesbites that set them to retrieve when you visit.
Frankie, Thanks!

Now, I get it.

Green on the way. Beers on me whenever I make it to your turf.