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ARTICLE · 20 MAY 2020

Cookies: A Bite In Cybernauts' Privacy? A Canadian-European Overview

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Cookie banners are increasingly prevalent on internet sites.

CanadaPrivacy
Julie Uzan-Naulin
Julie Uzan-Naulin
William Deneault-Rouillard
William Deneault-Rouillard
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Cookie banners are increasingly prevalent on internet sites. A section about cookies may appear in privacy policies and, sometimes, even an entire policy is devoted exclusively to them.

But what is a "cookie"? Also known as "HTTP cookies", "browser cookies" or "web cookies", a cookie is a small piece of digital data in the form of a text file sent by a website and saved locally on the user's device (computer, tablet, cell phone) through the web browser used while browsing on the Internet, often without the user's knowledge.

Cookies perform what are often essential functions. For example, authentication cookies1 track when a user has logged into a website and under what name.2 Without such a mechanism, the site would not know, for example, if it should require the user to identify themself when logging in. Tracking cookies, especially third-party tracking cookies, which belong to a different domain than the one indicated in the address bar,3 unlike

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