What is the sailthru_visitor cookie?
This cookie is set by Sailthru. The cookie contains an id that is used to identify a user's pageviews within a session.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 9 sites (0% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Advertising
- Belongs to
- Sailthru
- 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 sailthru_visitor before consent
The highest-ranked 9 of 9 sites.
- techcrunch.com38 tracking companies
- apnews.com14 tracking companies
- hbr.org12 tracking companies
- nbcnews.com20 tracking companies
- today.com19 tracking companies
- thedailybeast.com18 tracking companies
- propublica.org5 tracking companies
- popsci.com7 tracking companies
- foreignpolicy.com22 tracking companies
Related cookies
Other cookies from Sailthru.
- sailthru_pageviews9 sites
- sailthru_content7 sites
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop sailthru_visitor 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.