What is the _vwo_sn cookie?
Collects statistics on the visitor's visits to the website, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the website and what pages have been read.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 21 sites (1% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Analytics
- Belongs to
- Visual Website Optimizer
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- Under a day (vendor says: 1 day) — shorter than the vendor documents
Sites that set _vwo_sn before consent
The highest-ranked 21 of 21 sites.
- forbes.com2 tracking companies
- taboola.com4 tracking companies
- checkpoint.com4 tracking companies
- auvik.com7 tracking companies
- elmundo.es20 tracking companies
- weforum.org3 tracking companies
- suumo.jp11 tracking companies
- adroll.com11 tracking companies
- rapid7.com4 tracking companies
- acronis.com5 tracking companies
Show 11 more sites
- databricks.com4 tracking companies
- egnyte.com3 tracking companies
- n-able.com5 tracking companies
- trimble.com6 tracking companies
- itau.com.br6 tracking companies
- straitstimes.com21 tracking companies
- netshoes.com.br15 tracking companies
- termly.io4 tracking companies
- 20min.ch5 tracking companies
- qualys.com3 tracking companies
- casasbahia.com.br8 tracking companies
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop _vwo_sn 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.