title: Why does the default ASP.NET Forms Authentication Cookie have a leading period in it's default name => ".ASPXAUTH"
body: <p>the default <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.security.formsauthentication.formscookiename.aspx" rel="noreferrer">ASP.NET Forms Authentication cookie sets it's name as "<strong>.ASPXAUTH</strong>"</a>. Notice the first character is a <strong>period</strong>? Is there a particular reason for this? Like, does this have an impact on domain names or subdomains for the target domain.</p>
  
  <p>Or is it purely some random thing an MS dev person came up with (maybe to help out the ordering of the cookies, when they were debugging or something .. as text with periods prolly get listed before other strings)?</p>