Cookies have been around since the very beginnings of the internet yet it's only in the last seven or so years that people have actually taken notice of what they do, leading many to wonder whether they should accept or reject them from now on.
For most people cookies aren't anything more than the sweet baked goods we all know and love, yet increasingly you will have been bombarded with pop-ups on websites asking you if you want them or not.
It's often easiest to simply just click accept all to make the pop-up go away as quickly as possible, as that lets you actually get back to what you were doing in the first place, but there's a number of reasons why you might want to think a little more about that decision in the future.
What are cookies?
To understand whether you want to enable cookies when you're browsing, you first need to actually understand all of the different types and what purpose each one serves on the internet.
Cookies are in essence the thing that allows information to be stored on a website, and they can include things that allow a page to function to other features that you might not want as you browse.
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First and foremost every single webpage has what's known as essential cookies, as these include things like shopping cart information, assistance for online transactions, and login information. You can't access a website without having these enabled, so they're not something you ever need to worry about.
However, non-essential cookies are where you start to have a say, as these remain entirely optional and might be something to consider disabling depending on what purpose they serve.
Non-essential cookies are broadly split into three different types: functional, analytical, and advertising.
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Functional cookies apply to things like your language choices, currency types, and region, and can save you time when visiting your favorite sites.
Analytical cookies allow the owners of a website to collect statistics and other information that can help inform how you interact with the website, which usually results in better user experience over time, but might still be something some would rather disable.
Finally, and most controversially, advertising cookies are accessed and used by third-party vendors in order to serve you with ads based on your interests, so if you accept these on a clothing website then you're far more likely to be shown ads about clothes, for example.
Should you accept or reject cookies?
There isn't necessarily a hard and fast rule when it comes to accepting or rejecting cookies, but the option to do this as a result of the European Union 2018 privacy law known as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was born out of the desire to protect your data online, as per the Independent.
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Not all non-essential cookies have a negative purpose, and some can actually enhance your experience with a website, but generally people that are concerned with their security and privacy online tend to try and reject all wherever possible.
Advertising cookies are definitely the biggest version that you should keep an eye out for as that's where third-party vendors can start to create an online identify of what you like and are interested in buying, which while technically 'helpful' in showing you things you like, is considered by many to be an invasion of privacy.
Not all websites give you the option to reject all with a single button press, meaning that you have to go through and manually disable each one, but it's definitely worth it if you can be bothered.