Can cookies be used to gather sensitive information, such as a users email address?
Cookies cannot be used to gather sensitive information such as the fields in a Netscape preference file. They can be used to store any information that the user volunteers, for example by filling out an HTML form. In this case, however, the same information can just as easily (and with potentially more objectionable privacy concerns) be stored on the server by using a simple server-side application that stores user information in a database. Cookies are passive data structures that are delivered to the client, stored on the client’s hard drive, and returned in certain situations to the same server that provided the information in the first place.
