One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Central to understanding this is the idea that people can get used to anything. The human and societal cost of the war on drugs is staggering. A lot of people don't know what they are or how they work, and new and unknown is scary. Never mind that cookies, like binoculars or satellites, are pretty benign, although they can be used for evil purposes.
Cookies are little data files that are saved to an Internet user's computer.
These files track purchases loaded into online shopping carts, record how many times a user has seen a certain banner advertisement and so on. They help web sites identify when a regular visitor has returned, so that the visitor need not re-enter his identification information every time. Cookies were invented by Internet pioneer Lou Montulli in 1994, when he was working for the brand-new Netscape. Netscape was trying to help web sites become viable commercial enterprises. But the web sites were not very good at customer relations.