Are Third-Party Cookies enabled?

Updated at: Jul 2, 2024

This page tells you if Third-Party Cookies are enabled in your current web browser.

What are Cookies?

Cookies are little bits of information that websites store on your computer when you visit them. They can help websites "remember" things about you. A website might use a cookie to store your Currency or Language preference. They are also usually required if you log in to a website.

What are Third-Party Cookies?

A "first-party" cookie (or just a "normal" cookie) is "set" by which ever website you are actually using at the time. But, a "third-party cookie" is set when you are using one website, but that website has embedded javascript from a different (ie. a "third-party") website and the Javascript sets a cookie.

There's actually nothing inherently different about a first or third party cookie, it really just depends on the context you are relating to that cookie. For example, a cookie set by Facebook when you're using facebook.com is considered a first-person cookie, but if you are on a different website which has a Facebook Like! button; that button will access the same cookie; but in this context it would be considered a third-party cookie.

Are Third-Party Cookies safe?

As with "normal" cookies, there's still nothing inherently "bad" or unsafe about third-party cookies, the problem is that third-party cookies are a huge part of how different companies (typically advertising and social networks) track people's traffic, even when you're not directly using their website.

For example, say you've logged into facebook.com - facebook then knows who you are and sets a cookie after you log in - that's totally fine. If you then go and visit a completely unrelated website, normally Facebook would have no idea about this, but if this other website has a Facebook Like! button on it, that causes Facebook's code and cookies to be loaded on that other website, and now Facebook now knows that you've also accessed this otherwise unconnected website.

So using this approach of having its cookies loaded on lots of different websites, Facebook can build an extended profile of your browsing habits, even if you never share any links on facebook.com.

A lot of people find that unacceptable and so they choose to disable Third-party cookies.

Unlike first-party cookies (which are usually required to log into or use websites), Third-party cookies aren't typically required and so disabling them tends to "break" a lot less websites and have much less negative impact on your browsing.

Enabling or disabling Cookies

We have guides which will show you how to enable or disable Cookies for your browser.

A note on Safari and Third-Party Cookies

After extensive testing and debugging, it seems that when you disable Third-Party cookies in Safari, it will still hold on to them and keep using them until you restart Safari.

So if you choose to disable third-party cookies in Safari, make sure you restart (and perhaps Reset Safari) to ensure that it doesn't keep using any third party cookies it may have cached. Chrome and Firefox don't have this problem.

More questions?

If you have any more questions, use the contact form and we'll answer it and add your question here.