Chapter 1 Summary
I've spent a lot of my life using the internet. Until I read the section titled "The Internet and the Web," I wasn't aware that the internet was started in part by the US military's sponsored computer science project. Interestingly, I wasn't aware that Chrome's search bar is called the omnibox. I also learned that for Edge and Firefox, the search bar is referred to as the address bar. I also learned that if you want to save a webpage on Chrome or Firefox, you can just hit Ctrl and S on the keyboard. This brings up a box to save it as a complete webpage or just html or text. I think this is pretty useful if you need to keep something for later without needing the internet.
Something else I learned was a deeper understanding of what cookies do on my computer when I use it. I was aware that cookies were used for servers to remember information. However, I never really knew that the exact definition was that a cookie is a small text file that the web server saves right onto the hard drive. It holds specific stuff like your login name and password or what pages you viewed and even what was in your shopping cart. Knowing that the server retrieves that info when you go back to the site makes sense now for how automatic login works. It is still weird to think that these files save to the hard drive sometimes without the user even knowing about it.
What really surprised me though was the difference between first party and third party cookies. I learned that first party ones are just from the site you are visiting. On the other hand, third party cookies are actually from ads and other companies. They use them to track what ads we've seen and decide what to show you next. Most say it's an invasion of privacy, but I guess it stops everyone from seeing the same ads over and over. However, mostly every browser lets you block cookies so you'd still have some control over how much you're being tracked.
It is much easier to read on a screen if you keep the paragraphs somewhat short!