The Netscape website user manual describes cookies as "a piece of limited, internal information transmitted between server software and the Netscape application."
It'll probably make more sense to describe cookies in terms of what they are generally used for. Cookies are used by MANY websites for a variety of reasons: to set timestamps of when you last visited, counting the number of visitors to a website, storing configuration information of sites that you can personalize, to keep you from having to view the same advertising banner with certain ad systems, etc.
GreekChat.com uses cookies to set a timestamp of when you last visited so the website can highlight new messages when you return to the site. As an option, greekchat.com can also save your username/password so you do not need to type it in every time you visit - this is done through the preferences link and is NOT turned on by default (saving passwords/usernames is NOT recommended unless you are on your personal computer).
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John Hammell
Network Administrator, GreekChat.com
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