[ben0x539]

> How is a cookie 'just short of transmitting the user's SSN'?

In that it's fairly straightforward to track a user across multiple sites and sessions with a cookie, almost as easy as if the browser was already sending a user-specific identification number along on its own.

I didn't want to present Microsoft as the good guys here either, they're playing their own game and I have no illusion that they really care about their users' privacy.