Chapter 1

Chapter 1 went over three of the most popular web browsers and how to use and customize them effectively. Since I’ve been a Firefox and Chrome user for years, quite a few of the shortcuts and examples in this section were things I already knew. The part that really caught my attention, though, was the section on cookies, because it made me realize how little I actually paid attention to them before.

I knew what first-party cookies were and that websites use them for things like tracking, saving preferences, and login information, but I had never really checked how many were stored on my computer. When I finally looked at my Firefox history, I was shocked. I had almost 2.1 GB worth of cookies saved. Many were from sites I recognized and had visited within the past few months, but what surprised me the most were how many cookies these sites actually store. For example, Luzerne.edu alone had 186 cookies stored, totaling about 336 KB. Even more surprising was archive.org, which I don’t visit often, but it still had 11 cookies installed that added up to about 581 MB. That seemed like a massive amount of data for what I thought was mostly tracking and advertising information.

The section on copyright was another eye-opening part of the chapter. I always thought you had to file paperwork in order to gain copyright protection, but I learned that isn’t true. Copyright protection starts automatically as soon as something is created in a tangible form, like a document or digital file. You only need to register if you want to enforce your rights or take legal action.

I went into this Chapter assuming I was going to know some of if not all of the material presented since the Chapter’s title is literally “Browser Basics,” but I’m confident in admitting that this chapter definitely taught me a lot more about topics I thought I understood and has me looking forward to learning more as this class continues.

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