There’s also a difference between session cookies, which are code to keep track of what you do on the site, and tracking cookies which are code that spies on everything you do online in order to monetize it. A lot of us consider the former benign and the latter malware that we want the option of avoiding.
Malware is anything that negatively affects your computer. Cookies tracking your every move to sell your information to a third party that then inundates you with unwanted ads every time you use the internet would qualify IMO.
There is a difference between cookies (which are just strings of characters often used to keep you logged in) and actual malware executable code.
There’s also a difference between session cookies, which are code to keep track of what you do on the site, and tracking cookies which are code that spies on everything you do online in order to monetize it. A lot of us consider the former benign and the latter malware that we want the option of avoiding.
I think malware is software (executable) by definition though. Cookies are never executable, they are just data.
Malware is anything that negatively affects your computer. Cookies tracking your every move to sell your information to a third party that then inundates you with unwanted ads every time you use the internet would qualify IMO.