A Detailed Guide on Cache, Cookies, & Session Tokens

Last updated on May 25th, 2023 at 12:43 pm

If you have a privacy concern regarding your online activities then you might be aware of these web technologies used to track any person’s online activities and can expose anyone’s sensitive data. If any bad-minded person had a chance to steal your cache, cookies, or session token, he can do many things online on your behalf. Read this entire guide to know what Cache, Cookies, and Session Tokens are and also their advantages and disadvantages. By the end of this article, you will know how to clear cache and cookies in various browsers like (Chrome, Brave, and Firefox).

What is Cache?

The internet cache is a technology used to save time and data while the internet pages are loaded.  it simply means that if you visit our website regularly your browser might look at that web page data from its server, not every time you open up that website. In simple, your web browser saves static data like the website code and images in your computer storage to load that web page quickly whenever you open that website again. These commonly requested files are said to be cache files and are stored in a particular cache folder. Let’s suppose you are a regular visitor to our website you might find our website’s logo and the core website code stored in your browser’s cache folder and we don’t have any dynamic data that’s why our website loads faster in your browsers. Your browser is smart enough to load the data from the cache folder instead of fetching the webpage essential data from the web server every time you visit this website.

The modern web browsers have a lot more functionalities and intelligence to deal with the cache files and achieve cache hits every time. Many types of files like images, videos, CSS, javascript, etc. can be stored as cache files and browsers can delete them automatically after a certain time if those aren’t accessed or they passed their period. But a question arises here why do web browsers use to delete those cache files? The answer is quite simple because these cache files are stored in local storage on your computer and they occupy the space that’s why the browser uses to delete them so that your computer won’t run out of storage.

What are Cookies?

Cookies are simple to understand, but we don’t know why people complicate them to understand. Let’s relate cookies with a real-life example to understand them easily. Let’s suppose a person visits a website to buy some musical instruments-related stuff, adds some products to his cart, leaves the website without ordering anything that time, and revisits the same website after a month he would find his cart still loaded with those not-ordered items. Meanwhile, the web pages we surf are using HTTP protocols that are non-static and don’t hold our information for a time being. That’s why cookies come into play and make a bridge between us and the server so that we can communicate well. All of this is possible because of cookies. Let’s look at another example: As you may have seen hospitals have an amazing record management system. They only issue a single MR (Medical Record) number for patients and fetch all previous data and medical records of a patient to treat them accordingly. The patients don’t have to tell their name, their age, and other data every time they visit their doctor, they only ask for their MR number which contains all their information. All these real-life examples are related to internet cookies, and this concept of record-keeping used to store user essential data online.

Cookies are text files containing random numbers and letters used to issue a unique identity to every visitor and these cookies are stored both on the server machine and also on the client machine. Cookies are beneficial because they can be used to avail useful features like auto-logins, remembering passwords, and managing connectivity sessions between client and server. 

What are Session Tokens, Session IDs, or User Sessions?

A session token is quite similar to both Cache and Cookies & it can be defined as a token that is used for maintaining a connection session between the client and server. Session tokens or session IDs are widely used in the modern age of connectivity and play a great role in information security as well. Session tokens work with cache and cookies and contain many data parameters like what is the maximum time the client can spend being idle, how much time that session would be active, and what would be the final expiration time of the particular session. All these parameters are encoded and stored in a string and saved with cookies. 

(Chrome) How to Clear Cache and Cookies

If you are a google chrome user and looking for a (how to clear cache in Chrome), then follow these simple steps to clean and clear all the data including cache, cookies, and session tokens that can be used to track your online activities performed through Chrome Browser.

1. Open your Chrome Browser.

2. Toggle your mouse arrow to the up-right corner of your browser and click on vertical dots.

3. Goto the setting menu right below the Edit menu.

4. In the Settings menu, click on Privacy and Security.

5. Click on Clear Browsing Data & there would be many options to manage your internet history, cache, and cookies.

How to Clear Cache in Chrome (Mobile)

Below is the step-by-step guide to clearing cache and cookies and also the browsing history on Chrome mobile.

1. Open Google Chome

2. Tap on three dots to expand the options
   

3. Tap on Setting (Probably the second last option)

4. Under the Basics tap on Privacy and Security 

5. Tap on Clear Browsing Data.

6. Choose the time frame to clear the cache and cookies accordingly.

How to clear Cookies from Firefox

Clearing cookies in the Firefox browser is also easy on desktop and mobile devices. Follow these simple steps to make clear cookies from Firefox.

1. Open Firefox

   

   
   

2. Toggle to the up-right corner and click on the menu.

3. Go to the Privacy and Security under the General Tab.

   

   
   

4. Scroll down a little bit and click on Cookies and Site Data. In this menu, you can clear or manage your data.