What Are Social Media Cookies and How Do They Track Website Visitors?
Social media cookies are small identifiers that platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, X and YouTube use to recognise a browser as it moves around the web. They are set or read whenever a website loads one of the platform's features, such as a share button, a login widget, an embedded video or an advertising pixel. How they reach a visitor's browser The visitor does not need to click anything. When the page loads, the platform's script runs and can set its cookies. In the Fashion ID case in 2019, the Court of Justice of the EU described visitor data reaching Facebook as soon as a page with a Like button loaded, even for people without a Facebook account. The three main types Functionality cookies make social features work, such as "Log in with Facebook". Advertising cookies support retargeting and conversion tracking. Meta's _fbp and _fbc are common examples. Analytics cookies measure engagement with embedded content, such as YouTube's VISITOR_INFO1_L...