What Are Your Favorite Websites Storing On Your Computer? by Andrew Levinson

Cookies are one of the most misunderstood pieces of the modern web. While technically a cookie is just a simple text (.txt) file stored on your computer when you visit websites, its purposes are often confusing. The technology that enables basic online shopping is the same technology that allows third parties to track your movement across all your online activities. That raw power makes this worthy of a deeper dive.

To illustrate this, I did my own experiment. Starting with a clean slate, I cleared my browsing history, cache, and cookies. I then browsed the US internet's most popular websites for one uninterrupted hour. At the end of the hour, I exported the 1,117 new cookies that were placed on my computer during that time, with the help of a Firefox plugin, and analyzed the results.

The entrant has supplied multiple files for this work:

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