The internet is a wonderful tool, at its best, it allows you to communicate in real-time, access critical and important information, communicate, and also keeps you up-to-date on all the news that fits your particular desire. The browser that you use to access the internet is a facilitator for accomplishing the given tasks that you desire while utilizing all the wealth and breadth of the internet. The activities that I accomplish on the internet I consider to be a fairly private interaction between me and other web sites and also people, and not something to which I would desire to have some unknown or undisclosed 3rd party, keeping track of my activities, my proclivities, my keyboard clicks, my IP address, my location, the date and time of my browsing, the page that I am viewing, or a unique ID assigned to myself by the cookie, the correlation of any information that I filled out about myself on their website, which are all typically stored as cookies on my computer.
If you are wondering whether you should really be concerned about cookies and the invasion of your privacy, you should ask yourself a couple of questions. First, you should ask, to whom were cookies developed, for the consumer, or for the particular website, itself? The next question you should ask is for whom does the cookie benefit, the consumer or the particular website issuing the cookie, itself? Finally, you should note that most browsers default to accepting "all cookies", and when you change your browser settings to reject all cookies, messages such as: "Oops! Your browser seems to have cookies disabled. Make sure cookies are enabled or try opening a new browser window," pop up.
While there are obvious benefits to having websites that have a good beat on your shopping habits and desires so that they can possibly market you products that you desire or provide you with discounts that you are happy to receive, there are far more negative connotations on having a multitude of different corporations, marketing websites, and other agencies, that don't have your best interests in mind, and are definitely willing to sell your information to the highest bidder, in conjunction with having in their database pertinent information that you would not normally wish to be made available for public consumption whether by design or inadvertently.
When you speak to an attorney or to a medical doctor, you have the explicit right to attorney-client or doctor-patient confidentiality that protects you and your private business from prying eyes. The internet, instead, offers you no guarantees and appears to be "gaming the system" so as to monetize your inclinations and habits to partially benefit yourself, but mainly to benefit parties that you are completely clueless about and that do not have your best interests in mind.
Cookies are primarily a very effective way to exploit the consumer, essentially unbeknownst to that particular individual. Cookies are a wolf in sheep's clothing, pretending to be your aid, pretending to be your friend, pretending that it's just a little, cute, tasty cookie, but it isn't, it's intrusive, it isn't necessary, and it's hidden.