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Where are Cookies Kept?

Each type of Internet browser designates a particular place for storing cookies.

• Internet Explorer (IE) has a folder Cookies\ where cookies are kept as small individual text files, one for each cookie. In Windows 98/Me, the IE cookie folder is a sub-folder of the Windows folder. Windows XP has different folders, one for each user, \Documents and Settings\[User name]\Cookies\. As part of a complex caching scheme, pointers to IE cookies are also kept in the folder Temporary Internet Files\.
• Since AOL uses Internet Explorer underneath its proprietary interface, it employs the same method as IE and cookies are in the same place.
• Netscape and Mozilla related browsers use a single text file, cookies.txt, with each cookie occupying one or more lines within this one file. The location of the file depends on your version and type of browser.

The easiest way to find where cookies are kept is to do a Find or Search either on the folder name “Cookies” or the file name “cookies.txt”, depending on your browser.

What are Cookies for?

They are necessary to provide the function of “persistence”. Browsing the Internet involves what is known as a “stateless” process. In other words, a Web site ordinarily has no memory of who comes and goes. (Actually, logs of traffic are kept but these are not involved here.) As soon as the information that your browser requests from a site is downloaded to your computer, the connection is dropped. If you return to the site a minute later (or whenever), the site has no knowledge that you were just there. If a site has several pages and you go from one to the other the site does not remember which pages you have been to. That is, it won’t unless a cookie is on your machine to remind the site and provide continuity. The  gives the following

There are many reasons a given site would wish to use cookies. These range from the ability to personalize information (like on My Yahoo or Excite), or to help with on-line sales/services (like on Amazon Books or eBay), or simply for the purposes of collecting demographic information (like DoubleClick). Cookies also provide programmers with a quick and convenient means of keeping site content fresh and relevant to the user’s interests. The newest servers use cookies to help with back-end interaction as well, which can improve the utility of a site by being able to securely store any personal data that the user has shared with a site (to help with quick logins on your favorite sites, for example).

More details of how cookies work and what they do are given in the references in the sidebar.

Cookies and Privacy