Cookies used by web tracking – magnews Help Center

When the Web Tracking add-on is enabled and a web property is configured to recognize visitors, the magnews code uses first-party cookies to store visitor information and preferences. If you disable visitor recognition, the magnews code does not create any cookies.

When cookies are used

Whether cookies are used depends on the web property configuration.

If you enable one or both of these options:

Recognize and remember contacts
Remember anonymous visitors

the magnews code uses the cookies required to recognize visitors when they return to your website.

If you disable both options, magnews does not use any cookies. With this configuration, you can still display on site messages and signup forms, as long as the Show banners and pop-ups option is enabled in the web property.

For example, this configuration is useful if you want to display a signup pop-up or a banner on your website without recognizing visitors and without having to manage consent for Web Tracking cookies.

Cookie duration

You can configure cookie duration directly in the Advanced tab of the web property settings.

Two settings are available:

Remember the visitor for N days, which defines how long the visitor cookie (uid) remains valid.
By default, it is set to 730 days (2 years).
If you prefer to configure it directly in the magnews code, edit the userIdentityTimeout parameter.
Session duration, which defines how long session cookies (sid, ref, and sst) remain valid.
By default, it is set to 1 day.
If you prefer to configure it directly in the magnews code, edit the sessionTimeout parameter.

Cookie expiration is calculated from the last recorded activity. Each new visitor activity refreshes the cookie expiration time.

Technical details

When enabled, only first-party cookies are used (sent directly by the website where the code is installed).
Four different cookies are stored. Their names consist of the account ID followed by a suffix that identifies the cookie type:

<id account> + uid (User ID, tracks the contact ID)
<id account> + sid (Session ID, assign and track a session ID for each contact)
<id account> + ref (Reference, trace the origin of contact)
<id account> + sst (Session start time, track the time where a session is started)

The id account is indicated in base 16 in the cookie names.

This table contains a detailed description of the cookies mentioned.

Cookie Name	Cookie Description Name
uid	User ID - This visitor cookie contains a structured data item that records two pieces of information. The first piece of information is the contact ID. It is only filled in if the contact is recognized (registered in a database on the platform). If this part is not filled in, the visitor will be considered anonymous. The second piece of information is an ID assigned to the visitor's browser to recognize them on future visits to the site.
sid	Session ID - This session cookie contains a string that stores the contact session ID.
ref	Reference - This session cookie tracks the contact's origin (the entity from which the visit originated, e.g., a Communication, a Transactional Message, etc.). It is a string value containing the ID of the entity from which the contact originated. This ID can therefore only be interpreted by the platform. It is used for statistical purposes.
sst	Session start time - This session cookie stores a structured value containing two pieces of information: the first relates to the time the session begins, the second part containing the number of pages visited during the session.