What is the _sp_ses.* cookie?
Used to identify if the user is in an active session on a site or if this is a new session for a user (i.e. cookie doesn’t exist or has expired).
Our October 2026 scan found it on 24 sites (1% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Analytics
- Belongs to
- Snowplow
- Set as
- First-party on 96% of sites, third-party on 4%
- Typical lifetime
- Under a day (vendor says: 30 minutes)
- Name
- A family of cookies: the part after _sp_ses. varies by site or account.
Sites that set _sp_ses.* before consent
The highest-ranked 24 of 24 sites.
- tradingview.com2 tracking companies
- pexels.com4 tracking companies
- elconfidencial.com6 tracking companies
- digikala.com1 tracking company
- publi24.ro3 tracking companies
- xfinity.com8 tracking companies
- lego.com2 tracking companies
- surfshark.com1 tracking company
- technologyreview.com6 tracking companies
- hindustantimes.com36 tracking companies
Show 14 more sites
- capitalone.com6 tracking companies
- nrk.no0 tracking companies
- yr.no0 tracking companies
- aviasales.com3 tracking companies
- wistia.com3 tracking companies
- bitly.com4 tracking companies
- yle.fi1 tracking company
- island.io17 tracking companies
- uiowa.edu11 tracking companies
- sports.ru3 tracking companies
- livemint.com20 tracking companies
- uxfeedback.ru3 tracking companies
- aviasales.ru0 tracking companies
- rusprofile.ru2 tracking companies
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop _sp_ses.* 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.