Cookies tailor your internet session to suit you and your interests. Back in 2001-2002 I read an in-depth article on Internet privacy, from a well-known respected newspaper, and that article contained a definition of cookies. Paraphrasing, the definition went like this: "Cookies are programs that websites put on your hard disk. They sit on your computer gathering information about you and everything you do on the Internet, and whenever the website wants to it can download all of the information the cookie has collected."