Privacy risks of cookies

How cookies may harm your privacy

Cookies collect information about your interests, behaviour and preferences. Advertising companies may use this information to compile a profile of you. Advertisers use profiles of people to display targeted advertisements on websites and apps. Advertisers may sell these profiles or share them with other organisations.

The more data companies have about you, the better they can estimate what you want to buy. Advertising companies can also influence you with this information. In this way, the final result of (unconsciously) accepting cookies is that you will be seeing personal advertisements.

Companies may, for example, show you an offer that you may find very attractive, exactly at the right time. Advertisements may persuade you to do certain things or buy certain products, even if you did not intend to do this. As a result, advertisers can have an influence on your choice of products or services. Cookies often play a major role in this.

Examples of privacy risks caused by cookies

Cookies may collect information about relatively harmless subjects. Do you often view, for example, sports gear on apps and websites? Then companies will place you in the category ‘sporter’. As a result, you are shown advertisements for sportwear, fitness equipment or sports apps on websites and apps.

These categories may also be about sensitive subjects. Such as your health, political preference or financial situation. After visiting websites about a certain medical ailment you may, for example, see advertisements for medicines that may cure your ailment.

Cookies can also have an influence on the price you pay. Imagine, you want to go on a holiday and look for a flight online. Because cookies track your online behaviour, prices go up each time you visit the website of the company offering the tickets. In this way, the company tries to manipulate you. Because the price keeps going up, you decide at a certain moment to buy the ticket all the same. As a result, you may pay more for the ticket than someone who visits the website of the company for the first time.

Besides, cookies may track your location through an IP address. This is the unique address of your device (such as telephone or computer) on the Internet. This enables companies to know where you are. Companies may take advantage of this by, for example, displaying advertisements for local shops and services.

Your data in the hands of other parties

When you accept cookies on a website or an app, your personal data may be shared with hundreds of other companies. There are even websites that share your data with more than a thousand other companies. Often you do not know the identity of these companies. Nor is it always certain if these third parties will use your data safely and responsibly.

After you have accepted cookies, it is almost impossible to know which companies have your data and what they do with them. Besides, you may ask yourself if it is actually necessary that your data are shared with so many other companies.