What is the _pcid cookie?
This cookie contains the browserId (BID) that is used in Piano products for reporting and tracking purposes.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 57 sites (2% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Functional
- Belongs to
- Piano
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- 13 months (vendor says: 13 months) — about what the vendor documents
Sites that set _pcid before consent
The highest-ranked 30 of 57 sites.
- cnn.com5 tracking companies
- bbc.com4 tracking companies
- cnbc.com9 tracking companies
- unesco.org2 tracking companies
- hbr.org12 tracking companies
- nbcnews.com20 tracking companies
- onet.pl6 tracking companies
- corriere.it12 tracking companies
- elmundo.es20 tracking companies
- bfmtv.com2 tracking companies
Show 20 more sites
- itmedia.co.jp9 tracking companies
- leboncoin.fr3 tracking companies
- fortune.com7 tracking companies
- actu.fr3 tracking companies
- meteofrance.com5 tracking companies
- nikkansports.com7 tracking companies
- dw.com0 tracking companies
- blic.rs8 tracking companies
- jutarnji.hr10 tracking companies
- variety.com9 tracking companies
- politico.com31 tracking companies
- rollingstone.com7 tracking companies
- slate.com20 tracking companies
- scmp.com17 tracking companies
- hollywoodreporter.com5 tracking companies
- entrepreneur.com7 tracking companies
- zeit.de2 tracking companies
- smh.com.au6 tracking companies
- technologyreview.com6 tracking companies
- leparisien.fr3 tracking companies
Related cookies
Other cookies from Piano.
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop _pcid 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.