Chapter 22. ADVANCED COOKIE MANAGEMENT
In the previous chapter, you learned how to use cookies to authenticate webbots to access password-protected websites. This chapter further explores cookies and the challenges they present to webbot developers.
How Cookies Work
Cookies are small pieces of ASCII data that websites store on your computer. Without using cookies, websites cannot distinguish between new visitors and those that visit on a daily basis. Cookies add persistence, the ability to identify people who have previously visited the site, to an otherwise stateless environment. Through the magic of cookies, web designers can write scripts to recognize people's preferences, shipping address, login status, and other personal information.
There ...
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