What is the _parsely_session cookie?
JSON document storing information identifying a browsing session according to Parsely’s proprietary definition.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 31 sites (1% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Functional
- Belongs to
- Parse.ly
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- Under a day (vendor says: 30 minutes)
Sites that set _parsely_session before consent
The highest-ranked 30 of 31 sites.
- harvard.edu4 tracking companies
- nasa.gov3 tracking companies
- accuweather.com3 tracking companies
- techcrunch.com38 tracking companies
- cnet.com6 tracking companies
- nbcnews.com20 tracking companies
- whitehouse.gov2 tracking companies
- usnews.com4 tracking companies
- pewresearch.org6 tracking companies
- zdnet.com8 tracking companies
Show 20 more sites
- vice.com14 tracking companies
- fastcompany.com17 tracking companies
- sport24.gr8 tracking companies
- inc.com18 tracking companies
- axios.com5 tracking companies
- woocommerce.com5 tracking companies
- gamespot.com8 tracking companies
- virginia.edu7 tracking companies
- rottentomatoes.com6 tracking companies
- today.com19 tracking companies
- walkme.com2 tracking companies
- thedailybeast.com18 tracking companies
- foursquare.com4 tracking companies
- stuff.co.nz19 tracking companies
- heroku.com2 tracking companies
- globalnews.ca10 tracking companies
- abril.com.br5 tracking companies
- propublica.org5 tracking companies
- popsci.com7 tracking companies
- foreignpolicy.com22 tracking companies
Related cookies
Other cookies from Parse.ly.
- _parsely_visitor31 sites
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop _parsely_session being set on later visits. Blocking third-party cookies in your browser settings stops the third-party kind everywhere, and clearing cookies for a site removes any it already set.
Description from the Open Cookie Database (Apache 2.0).
Understanding this page
- How cookie lifetimes work, and why a 13-month _ga matters
What a cookie's "expires" field actually controls, why Google Analytics ships a 2-year default that many sites cut down to 13 months, and how Safari's 7-day cap on script-set cookies changes the picture.
- First-party vs third-party cookies (and why "first-party" still tracks you)
What the distinction actually means technically, why browsers only block one of the two, and how CNAME cloaking, server-side tagging and cookies like _ga let sites keep tracking under their own domain.
- How to block or limit trackers
Browser privacy settings, content blockers, Global Privacy Control and clearing cookies compared honestly — what each one actually stops, what it doesn't, and what it costs you in return.