Cookies and JavaScript were developed by Netscape and introduced around 1995 as
key technologies in the first widely-used Web browser. As such, both cookies and
JavaScript were specifically designed with Internet security in mind. They have
been thoroughly tested over the last decade and their security record is so
clean, that both have been enabled by default in nearly every release of every
major Web browser since their introduction.
Cookies are small text files on your computer into which a Web site can
store tiny bits of information. There are only two types of information that can
be stored in cookies:
• information you provide to the site, via a form, or
• information the site creates on its own
"recognize" you and present appropriate information to you about your account,
such as items in your shopping cart, without requiring you to "login" to each
and every Web page you visit.
Cookies can not be used to infect your computer with a virus or worm, nor to
otherwise "hack" into your computer to obtain information about you.
Another security feature of Cookies is that they can only be read by the site
that created them. In other words, MaineToday.com can't read cookies set by
Amazon.com, or vice-versa. So we have no way to discover what books you may
have purchased from Amazon.com or when you may have last visited that site.
MaineToday.com uses cookies to store non-identifying information about you, as
well as some of your preferences, such as which weather forecast you prefer to
view.
JavaScript is a fairly simple programming language designed specifically
for use in Web browsers. Unlike most programming languages, JavaScript does not
have any provisions to either read from or write to any files stored on your
computer other than cookies. Thus, it does not allow Web sites to "hack" into
your computer to learn anything about you. Nor can Javascript be used to "take
control" of your computer.
JavaScript is necessary because it allows MaineToday.com and other Web sites to
improve the ease-of-use of their sites, rather than requiring cumbersome and
clunky workarounds.
