Can cookies be used to gather sensitive information?
Cookies cannot be used to gather sensitive information such as the fields in a browser preference file. They can be used to store any information provided by the server/application that the visitor volunteers and that the Web site places in the cookie, 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 visitor information in a database. Cookies are passive data structures that are delivered to the visitor, stored on the visitor’s hard drive, and returned in certain situations to the same server that provided the information in the first place.
