What is the ai_session cookie?
This is a unique anonymous session identifier cookie.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 13 sites (1% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Functional
- Belongs to
- Microsoft Azure App Insights
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- Under a day (vendor says: Session)
Sites that set ai_session before consent
The highest-ranked 13 of 13 sites.
- bing.com0 tracking companies
- cloud.microsoft2 tracking companies
- msn.com4 tracking companies
- inmobi.com12 tracking companies
- sagepub.com4 tracking companies
- xbox.com1 tracking company
- appcenter.ms1 tracking company
- tjsp.jus.br3 tracking companies
- aboutcookies.org2 tracking companies
- powerbi.com1 tracking company
Show 3 more sites
- minecraft.net3 tracking companies
- pandasecurity.com3 tracking companies
- serverdata.net3 tracking companies
Related cookies
Other cookies from Microsoft Azure App Insights.
- MUID38 sites
- ASP.NET_SessionId23 sites
- _uetsid22 sites
- _uetvid21 sites
- MR16 sites
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop ai_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.