Third-party cookies are phasing out, now what?
Third-party cookies received an ultimatum. Browsers are currently phasing them out, which means they won’t be allowed anymore if you use any modern browser, like Safari, Firefox, or Chrome. This decision is not recent, but since the deadline is near, it’s time to understand what’s up with these changes and how they affect us. Despite this being a good thing for user’s privacy, it is something that may hit hard on some businesses. This is a brief overview of what’s happening and what you can do about it.
A cookie is a piece of data stored by a website on your computer. It consists of a text file with a key-value relation followed by some configuration, and it is used to remember some parameters about the user and the usage of a website. For example, it stores a session token, a locale preference, or even the fact that you were on that page before. Without them, you probably would have to log in or authenticate at every page change or every action taken. Those cookies can be trivially set by the website you’re visiting, usually after clicking "Accept" on a cookie consent banner. Yes, those you often see blocking content and sometimes they have no "Decline" option.
They can live for a predetermined timespan or until you close your browser, ending your session. Differently from the local storage, a tool used to store the state between sessions and requests, cookies are sent to the server on every request you make to websites (if they’re set to do so). Without them, all states you have set on your browser during your stay on that page would be lost. Everything will be refreshed when you refresh a page, directly write a URL at the navigation bar, or click a link.
