Cookies and Remembering
Websites can leave tiny notes on your device so they recognise you next visit. Helpful for logins, risky if you forget they exist.
- Describe a cookie as a small saved note from a site
- Give one helpful and one careful example of cookies
- Explain why clearing cookies logs you out
Finish first
Topic contents
Lesson 1 of 3
A sticky note on your browser
When a shop site keeps items in your basket overnight, it often saved a cookie: a small text file with an ID. Next visit, the site reads the note and rebuilds your basket.
Cookies are not programs. They cannot run code by themselves. They are labels the site you chose can read back later.
Follow the step-flow. See login, cookie written, return visit recognised.
Lesson 2 of 3
Helpful versus creepy
Language preference and dark mode are helpful uses. Tracking you across unrelated sites for ads feels creepy to many people. Browsers now ask before some tracking cookies.
Never put passwords inside cookies yourself. Real sites use secure sessions instead of readable secrets.
Compare the animation rows: school login cookie versus ad tracker following you site to site.
Lesson 3 of 3
You finished the internet path
You followed searches, home Wi-Fi, DNS, packets, HTTPS and cookies. That is the real journey behind a tap on a link.
The online safety path next teaches passwords and kindness on top of this machinery.
Clear cookies if a shared computer should forget who was logged in.
Practice
Work these out yourself
No answer key here on purpose: these are the questions worth thinking through before you move on. Open one and work it out.
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Check your understanding
Answer each question, then read the explanation. That is where the learning is.
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