Cookies: what they are and what they are not

Developed by Netscape several years ago, cookies are small strings generated by web sites and sent to your browser. When accepted by you, they are written to your hard disk, usually in the form of a text file.

Why does J S Publications use cookies for turn2experts?
We use cookies to make turn2experts easier to use and more 'intelligent'.

Internet Explorer 6
The quick solution that will get your browser to accept our cookies is to add our domain to the trusted sites list on your installation of Internet Explorer.

In Internet Explorer:

• choose the Tools|Options menu item.
• in the Internet Options dialogue box, pick the Security tab
• click the Trusted Sites (big green tick) image and then the Sites... button
• add http://www.turn2experts.co.uk/ into the top entry box
• click the Add button. (You will need to ensure the Require server verification... tick box isn't checked.)

This should allow J S Publications cookies through without changing how your browser deals with all other sites on the web.

Non-malicious
Because cookies are written to your hard disk, you may think that hackers could gain access to your machine via a cookie. This is just not possible. Cookies are simply text. They cannot be used to create or transmit a virus, they are not scripts and they are not executable.

Web site-specific
Importantly, cookies can only been 'seen' by the web site that originally sent them to you. So cookies do not allow information to be passed from one web site to another.

Statelessness
You may already know that as far as the web is concerned you disappear after each and every page request you make. Even if you stay within a particular web site, you are still seen as a new vistor each time you click to a different page.

This is because the web is 'stateless': it does not remember what state it was in from one moment to the next. Cookies are often used to overcome this statelessness. The cookie allows the original web site to recognise your computer when you return, and this is why J S Publications needs to use cookies.