Does deleting cookies free up memory?
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com.
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Here's the question we got.
Will deleting cookies free up room in my computer's memory?
The confusing answer is yes, no, and maybe.
The more complete answer, of course,
is that it's not necessarily that simple, but the answer is mostly no.
Cookies, of course,
are small pieces of data that websites actually have your browser store on your
computer so that the next time you visit that website, that information is returned
to it so it can actually save some information.
The most important piece of information
that it might save is the fact that you're still logged in.
So if you log into a site,
then go visit some other site, and then come back to the first site,
it's cookies that actually cause you to not have to log in yet again.
It would be a pain to have to log in every
single page or every time you came back to that site.
So that's what cookies are.
Cookies are generally stored on disk.
So we need to first clarify something.
Memory is not disk space.
Those are two different things.
Yes, I understand disk space remembers things.
It's used to remember things.
So in a sense, it's memory.
But in reality, in practical terms, when we talk about computers,
when we talk about technology, when we're saying memory, we're talking about RAM.
That's the memory that your computer uses while it's running.
It's the memory that basically gets erased when you turn off your computer.
Disk space is, of course, what's stored on your disk.
It's what is used to store things long term.
Your files go there,
your programs are stored there, the operating system comes from there.
Cookies are stored on disk, so they take up some disk space.
How much?
Not very much at all.
In theory, yeah, deleting cookies will in fact free up some disk space,
but it is such an incredibly tiny amount of disk space that it's meaningless.
It really is, especially given today's disk sizes.
When we're talking about disks that default to something like
a terabytes or more, the fact that a 512 bite cookie
exists and is taking up a little bit of room on your disk is meaningless.
There are much better ways to free up disk space if that's what you're looking to do.
Now, cookies do not appreciably impact your browser's speed either.
They're only really used when you're visiting a specific website.
Chances are if you have speed issues
with a website, it's not because of cookies,
it's because of whatever that website happens to be doing.
Now, the other topic in which cookies tend
to play a fairly large role, at least in the discussion, is privacy.
And in fact, if you've ever been to a website that's
hosted in Europe, you'll see that the GDPR requires websites to basically ask you if
it's okay to store cookies on your machine.
It's silly because
many websites just don't work well without being able to have cookies.
They would force you to log in over and over again.
There's a whole raft of side issues with respect to that.
And in reality, that notification that you get when you visit a website for the first
time that says, Hey, is it okay if I use cookies?
Well, yeah, it has to be.
It is how websites work.
And we've all basically become,
I don't know, almost blind to that message,
basically just hitting okay to get it out of our face as quickly as possible.
But the issue that it's trying to address
is the fact that there may be some privacy related issues relating to cookies.
Now, my position is that so called tracking cookies
are mostly harmless and really don't affect your personal privacy much at all.
However, they're also almost impossible to avoid.
There are so many ways to track you.
Cookie happens to be the easiest and perhaps the most visible way.
Honestly, of all the different ways that a website might track me,
yes, it's cookies that I would want it to use because then at least I'm aware
and at least I have an opportunity to see what's going on.
But the fact is, cookies really aren't
that big a privacy issue from my perspective.
You and I as individuals just aren't that interesting.
The benefits that they provide from being
able to prevent us from having to log in over and over and over again are really
a strong benefit and make them worth their while.
But the bottom line is, do you really free up any memory by deleting cookies?
No, you're certainly not freeing up any RAM, and the amount of disk space
that you're freeing up is minuscule compared to what you have on your machine.
For comments, for updates,
for links related to this topic and more, visit
askleo.com/130643.
I'm Leo Notenboom and this Askleo.com.
Thanks for watching.