What is the OptanonConsent cookie?
This cookie is set by the cookie compliance solution from OneTrust. It stores information about the categories of cookies the site uses and whether visitors have given or withdrawn consent for the use of each category. This enables site owners to prevent cookies in each category from being set in the user’s browser, when consent is not given. The cookie has a normal lifespan of one year, so that returning visitors to the site will have their preferences remembered. It contains no information that can identify the site visitor.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 384 sites (16% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Functional
- Belongs to
- OneTrust
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- 12 months (vendor says: 1 year) — about what the vendor documents
Sites that set OptanonConsent before consent
The highest-ranked 30 of 384 sites.
- cloudflare.com2 tracking companies
- fastly.net1 tracking company
- spotify.com1 tracking company
- ui.com0 tracking companies
- epicgames.com1 tracking company
- intuit.com1 tracking company
- webex.com4 tracking companies
- discord.com2 tracking companies
- soundcloud.com7 tracking companies
- cnn.com5 tracking companies
Show 20 more sites
- cisco.com2 tracking companies
- namecheap.com4 tracking companies
- forter.com3 tracking companies
- booking.com1 tracking company
- salesforce.com1 tracking company
- hp.com2 tracking companies
- dell.com12 tracking companies
- name.com3 tracking companies
- weebly.com1 tracking company
- slack.com6 tracking companies
- checkpoint.com4 tracking companies
- hostgator.com3 tracking companies
- washingtonpost.com12 tracking companies
- opendns.com2 tracking companies
- gitlab.com2 tracking companies
- nvidia.com1 tracking company
- go.com3 tracking companies
- supercell.com0 tracking companies
- intel.com1 tracking company
- paloaltonetworks.com2 tracking companies
Related cookies
Other cookies from OneTrust.
- _mkto_trk22 sites
- OneTrustWPCCPAGoogleOptOut6 sites
- OTGPPConsent4 sites
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop OptanonConsent 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.