What is the s_ecid cookie?
This cookie is set by the customer's domain after the AMCV cookie is set by the client. The purpose of this cookie is to allow persistent ID tracking in the 1st-party state and is used as a reference ID if the AMCV cookie has expired.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 40 sites (2% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Advertising
- Belongs to
- Adobe Analytics
- Set as
- First-party on 98% of sites, third-party on 3%
- Typical lifetime
- 13 months (vendor says: 2 years) — shorter than the vendor documents
Sites that set s_ecid before consent
The highest-ranked 30 of 40 sites.
- dell.com12 tracking companies
- paloaltonetworks.com2 tracking companies
- foxnews.com3 tracking companies
- loc.gov1 tracking company
- elpais.com7 tracking companies
- bild.de0 tracking companies
- box.com8 tracking companies
- welt.de0 tracking companies
- nbcnews.com20 tracking companies
- as.com7 tracking companies
Show 20 more sites
- hotpepper.jp13 tracking companies
- makemytrip.com1 tracking company
- jalan.net27 tracking companies
- euronews.com12 tracking companies
- verizon.com20 tracking companies
- trellix.com3 tracking companies
- ford.com17 tracking companies
- rtve.es5 tracking companies
- hotwire.com2 tracking companies
- capitalone.com6 tracking companies
- allstate.com2 tracking companies
- mathworks.com3 tracking companies
- telstra.com2 tracking companies
- today.com19 tracking companies
- asos.com5 tracking companies
- bahn.de1 tracking company
- abc.es7 tracking companies
- huntington.com9 tracking companies
- foxbusiness.com3 tracking companies
- toyota.com19 tracking companies
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop s_ecid 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.