Stopping my site from creating tracking cookies

  • NW1

    (@nw1)


    10 years, 1 month ago

    Hey folks

    I’m running a WP website using the Responsive theme.

    I’m also using the following plugins:

    Broken Link Checker
    Contact Form 7
    Contemplate
    Exclude Pages from Navigation
    Limit Login Attempts
    Redirection
    Responsive Add Ons
    WordPress SEO
    WP Clone by WP Academy
    WP Jump Menu

    I notice that when I run anti-spyware scans, they pick up two tracking cookies from my own website on my computer.

    I have no idea why my site uses these cookies – it certainly wasn’t deliberate on my part.

    What is the likely source of these tracking cookies, and how can I stop my site from using them?

    Obviously I don’t want my visitors to find out it’s using them and then stop visiting.

    Thanks in advance!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Saravanan S, a11n

    (@simplysaru)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    WordPress does use tracking cookies. You can read more about it here.
    http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Cookies

    Apart from those details, Tracking cookies are usually used to keep track of no of visitors, page views, time spent on your site and so on. If you have enabled site stats like google analytics, clicky or any other tracking, they will place a cookie to track returning visits etc. Please check if you have enabled any such tracking. That way you can reduce the amount of data that is tracked. I doubt if you can get rid of cookies on your site totally. If you think your audience will be worried about tracking, i would suggest you can start mentioning that your site does use tracking cookies.

    Thread Starter NW1

    (@nw1)

    10 years ago

    Thanks, Saravanan.

    I’ve done some thorough investigation and have some more information.

    When I login to the WordPress dashboard for my site, it puts the wp-settings-1 and wp-settings-time-1 cookies on my machine. It seems to be these two that are being detected as tracking cookies.

    It doesn’t look like my site adds any cookies if visitors are just using the site normally, so that addresses my main concern.

    One thing that I’m still curious about though: I have another WordPress site that also puts the wp-settings-1 and wp-settings-time-1 cookies on my machine, but they aren’t detected as tracking cookies by the same software.

    Why would these cookies only come up as tracking cookies for one site and not the other?

    Thanks again

    Saravanan S, a11n

    (@simplysaru)

    10 years ago

    Interesting, I am not sure why only one site’s cookies are getting marked as tracking cookies and the other site’s are not marked. May be the application is set to ignore those cookies ?

    Thread Starter NW1

    (@nw1)

    10 years ago

    Actually, no – the scanning program I’m using just runs a normal scan of everything, so I have no idea why it picks them up as tracking cookies from one site and not the other.

    Anyway, that’s really just a point of curiosity and not a functional problem. As long as the “tracking cookies” aren’t ending up on my visitors’ machines and freaking them out, I’m happy.

    Thanks for your input on this. Have a good one!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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