What is the WMF-Last-Access cookie?

This cookie is used by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is used to determine the last time a user visited a page, and is used for various statistics.

Our October 2026 scan found it on 8 sites (0% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.

Purpose: Analytics
Belongs to: Wikimedia
Set as: First-party (under the site's own domain)
Typical lifetime: 32 days (vendor says: session)

Sites that set WMF-Last-Access before consent

The highest-ranked 8 of 8 sites.

wikipedia.org0 tracking companies
wikimedia.org0 tracking companies
wiktionary.org0 tracking companies
wikisource.org0 tracking companies
wikibooks.org0 tracking companies
mediawiki.org0 tracking companies
wikidata.org0 tracking companies
wikiquote.org0 tracking companies

Related cookies

Other cookies from Wikimedia.

How to stop it

Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop WMF-Last-Access 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.