from my security program, which blocks most cookies...

"Cookies are bits of information that web servers store on your computer for their later use. Web servers can use cookies to keep track of how many times you've visited and when, and what sort of information you've been surfing for on their site. They can even use cookies to pass that information on to other web servers, such as advertisement servers. On the positive side, cookies can be used to store your own web site configuration, to remember items placed in your "shopping cart" at an online shopping site, or to store account and password information for subscription sites. You may not want to block all cookies, which is why AtGuard lets you permit or block cookies on a per-site basis."