What is the affinity cookie?
A generic name several load balancers and application-delivery platforms use to implement session affinity ("stickiness") — keeping a visitor's requests routed to the same backend server for the length of a session — rather than to identify the visitor.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 24 sites (1% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Necessary
- Belongs to
- Various
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- Session
Sites that set affinity before consent
The highest-ranked 24 of 24 sites.
- webex.com4 tracking companies
- telekom.net2 tracking companies
- cisco.com2 tracking companies
- dnsmadeeasy.com1 tracking company
- okta.com3 tracking companies
- mcafee.com0 tracking companies
- twilio.com9 tracking companies
- bitdefender.com4 tracking companies
- hpe.com10 tracking companies
- crowdstrike.com3 tracking companies
Show 14 more sites
- ey.com1 tracking company
- accenture.com0 tracking companies
- thawte.com4 tracking companies
- kpmg.com1 tracking company
- panasonic.com0 tracking companies
- au.com9 tracking companies
- rapidssl.com2 tracking companies
- qualcomm.com2 tracking companies
- swisscom.ch0 tracking companies
- arlo.com3 tracking companies
- abb.com2 tracking companies
- ubs.com1 tracking company
- pa.gov3 tracking companies
- vivo.com.br6 tracking companies
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop optional cookies, though a necessary cookie like this one may still be set. 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 written by CookieTosser, for a cookie the Open Cookie Database doesn't cover.
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.