Wikimedia - cookies

I've built a front-end to display information from a wikimedia database that uses Text_Wiki and Text_Wiki_Mediawiki, but I can't seem to figure out how the wiki keeps track of its cookies and such. I would like to expand this to front-end so if it can pick up someone has logged into the wiki before, and allow them more options. Does anyone know how the wikimedia cookies are stored and how I can access them? Sorry if this is something extremely simple, I'm still a bit of a noob :) -- Using Opera's revolutionary client: http://www.opera.com/