Commerce Reference Store configures the ATG platform to set two cookies, DYN_USER_ID and DYN_USER_CONFIRM, for storing user profile information. The DYN_USER_CONFIRM cookie is a hash of the DYN_USER_ID cookie.

These cookies are used for automatic login, the process of detecting a returning customer and associating the customer with his or her existing user profile. The purpose of using the two cookies is to protect against a customer gaining access to another user’s profile by modifying the DYN_USER_ID cookie. The user profile associated with DYN_USER_ID is used only if it matches the hashed value in DYN_USER_CONFIRM. If the cookies do not match, a new profile is created instead.

You can disable profile cookies by setting the sendProfileCookies property of the /atg/userprofiling/CookieManager component to false. This disables both the DYN_USER_ID and DYN_USER_CONFIRM cookies.

Disabling these cookies prevents automatic login, which means a returning customer is not automatically associated with his or her profile. Automatic login also enables Commerce Reference Store to display the welcome message on the home page and populate the shopping cart with items placed there during previous shopping sessions. Note that automatic login does not allow access to secured areas such as checkout; even if automatic login is enabled, the customer must log in to check out, or use guest checkout.

For more information about managing profile cookies, see ATG Personalization Programming Guide.