What is the _uetvid cookie?
This cookie is used by Microsoft Advertising's Universal Event Tracking (UET) to track user behavior and attribute conversions to targeted ad campaigns.
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About the _uetvid cookie
| Vendor | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Category Category The functional category of the technology, such as Web Analytics or Social Media. Learn more | Web Analytics |
| Consent Category Consent Category The consent category this cookie most commonly falls under across sites we scan, normalized into four standard categories. Learn more | Targeting & Advertising |
| Prevalence | Very Common |
| Popularity Popularity Popularity is calculated from our dataset of 4.5B+ cookies analyzed across hundreds of millions of web pages. Learn more | Found on 18.9% of scanned pages |
| Expiration Type | Timestamp |
| Expiration Duration | 24 days |
| Party Type Party Type Whether the cookie is first-party or third-party. Learn more | 1st-Party |
| Risk Level Risk Level Rates how sensitive the data stored by this cookie is (High, Medium, or Low) based on data classification and distribution. Learn more | Medium |
| Vendor Privacy Policy | https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement |
| Vendor Website | https://www.microsoft.com |
What is the purpose of the _uetvid cookie?
The _uetvid cookie is deployed by the Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag. It stores a unique, pseudo-anonymized visitor ID that represents an individual user interacting with a website. This persistent identifier allows Microsoft Advertising to track website visits, measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns by recording conversion events (e.g., purchases or lead submissions), and build remarketing audiences by recognizing returning visitors and linking their on-site behavior to prior ad clicks.
What are the Privacy Risks of the _uetvid cookie?
Risk Level: Medium
This cookie presents a medium privacy risk because it assigns a persistent, unique identifier to the user's browser. This identifier enables long-term behavioral tracking and cross-session profiling for targeted advertising purposes. While the identifier is pseudo-anonymized and does not inherently expose raw Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to third parties, the collected tracking data is used to monitor user activities across the site and link this behavior to sophisticated advertising profiles within the Microsoft Advertising ecosystem.
How to Remove the _uetvid cookie from a Website
To remove this cookie, a site administrator must locate and remove the Microsoft Advertising Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag (often labeled as 'Bing Ad Loader' or initiated via bat.js) from the website's source code or tag management system. If the UET tag must remain active for non-cookie-based conversion tracking, the administrator can modify the UET tracking code initialization by including the storeConvTrackCookies: false parameter, which explicitly disables the creation of first-party tracking cookies.