Are there any risks in using persistent vs non-persistent cookies?
Persistent cookies are data that a web site places on the user’s hard drive (or equivalent) for maintaining information over more than one browser session. This data will stay in the user’s system and can be accessed by the site the next time the user browses the site. Non-persistent cookies on the other hand are those that are used only in the browser session that creates it. They stay only in the memory of the machine and are not persisted on the hard disk. The security risk with persistent cookies is that they are generally stored in a text file on the client and an attacker with access to the victim’s machine can steal this information.
