Role of Cookies and Other Tracking Mechanisms

Cookies and other tracking mechanisms play a crucial role in session management by helping applications remember the users through multiple interactions and their preferences and behavior. Below are some of the mechanisms through which they manage the task.

1. Session Cookies

• Identification: When the user logs into the system, an ID is generated. This is a unique identifier that is stored in the session cookie assigned to an individual user which identifies the user on their forthcoming visits.
• Temporary Storage: The details stored in temporary in nature, such as login status and other session-specific data.
• Automatic Logins: They store the user’s authentication credentials which helps the user to not provide the credentials every a time they are logging into the system. It performs as an auto login where it will take the details from the session cookie and login to the platform. This can be performed with some time frame to identify the user or in simpler words, this can be stored for a specific time period to maintain security of the system.

2. Persistent Cookies

• Extended Recognition: Unlike session cookies which expires when the user closes browser, persistent cookies generally have a longer lifespan.
• Personalization: Persistent cookies can store user preferences providing a personalized experience across multiple visits of the user to the platform.

3. Tracking Mechanisms

• User Activity Tracking: Websites may use JavaScript or pixels as tracking mechanisms to monitor the user’s activity enhancing user experience and analytics.
• Third-Party Cookies: For this very purpose, some websites prefer third-party cookies which are generally set by domains.

4. Security Measures

• CSRF Tokens: Cookies can also store anti-CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) tokens to prevent unauthorized actions, thus enhancing the overall security of the platform.
• Secure and HttpOnly Flags: Cookies can also be marked with HttpOnly flag to prevent client-side scripts from accessing them which convey as secure to ensure they are only transmitted over secure (HTTPS) connections, thus reducing the risk of certain types of attacks.

Session is used to save user information momentarily on the server. It starts from the instance the user logs into the application and remains till the user logs out of the application or shuts down the machine. In both cases, the session values are deleted automatically. Hence, it functions as a temporary storage that can be accessed till the user is active in the application and can be accessed when the user requests a URI. This session is stored in binary values, hence maintaining the security aspect, and can be decoded only at the server end.