• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 26, 2005

More than three-quarters of online users say they know what cookies are, but only three out of 10 can accurately define cookies, according to a recent study by Insight Express. The full report, to be presented today at Ad:Tech, was based on an April online survey of 800 Internet users and in-depth interviews with 300 participants.

Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they knew what cookies were, but when pressed for a definition, only 29 percent were able to give a correct definition, such as "a file that is stored on your computer that contains information for a specific Web site." Almost half--47 percent--provided incorrect definitions, such as "a connection left on your computer for someone to use to contact your computer again." An additional 24 percent said they weren't sure.

A portion of the report released last week revealed that only 35 percent of a portion of respondents--the 50 percent who agreed to delete cookies for the researchers--were able to do so.

Most of the respondents--around 56 percent--said they manually deleted cookies at least once a month, with 16 percent saying they purged cookies daily, 22 percent reporting doing so once a week, and 17 percent saying they erased cookies monthly. Other recent reports also have shown that consumers are deleting cookies; a study by Jupiter Research last month shocked many online ad executives with its conclusion that 39 percent of consumers purge cookies monthly.

Why do consumers delete cookies? The most popular reason, cited by 77 percent of the InsightExpress respondents, was to free up disk space, while 67 percent said they did so to protect privacy and prevent tracking. Other common reasons included deleting spyware/adware, cited by 57 percent of respondents; making the computer run faster (57 percent); and because it was recommended that they do so (51 percent).

Despite the deletions, the report concludes that cookies still "provide substantially better information than available in offline media."