What is the locale cookie?
This cookie contains the display locale of the last logged in user on this browser. This cookie appears to only be set after the user logs out. The locale cookie has a lifetime of one week.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 22 sites (1% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Advertising
- Belongs to
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- 12 months (vendor says: 7 days) — longer than the vendor documents
Sites that set locale before consent
The highest-ranked 22 of 22 sites.
- openai.com1 tracking company
- dropbox.com0 tracking companies
- discord.com2 tracking companies
- goodreads.com2 tracking companies
- doctolib.fr1 tracking company
- independent.co.uk10 tracking companies
- meta.com1 tracking company
- sedo.com0 tracking companies
- wattpad.com3 tracking companies
- inleed.net0 tracking companies
Show 12 more sites
- blizzard.com2 tracking companies
- lego.com2 tracking companies
- infomaniak.com0 tracking companies
- nordvpn.com1 tracking company
- okx.com0 tracking companies
- dns.com2 tracking companies
- lovable.dev0 tracking companies
- united.com7 tracking companies
- coindesk.com7 tracking companies
- southwest.com1 tracking company
- meteoblue.com3 tracking companies
- expressvpn.com2 tracking companies
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop locale 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.