So let’s say the company wants to save the cart, the user’s favorites, and their search preferences so when they come back it’s still there. A cookie isn’t a database. So they store that info in a DB using the cookie id as the index.
Is that a phantom account? You’ve got rows in a DB for a user who never signed up.
>>thehap+(OP)
Generally when you want to save favorites, most, as far as I've used, storefronts require that you create an account before allowing those functions.