What is the CLID cookie?
Identifies the first time Microsoft Clarity saw the user on any site using Clarity to generate aggregated behavioral analytics.
Table of Contents
About CLID
| Vendor | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Cookie Domain | clarity.ms |
| Category Category The functional category of the technology, such as Web Analytics or Social Media. Learn more | Heatmap & Recording |
| Consent Category Consent Category The consent category this cookie most commonly falls under across sites we scan, normalized into four standard categories. Learn more | Performance & Analytics |
| 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 11% of scanned pages |
| Expiration Type | Timestamp |
| Expiration Duration | 30 days |
| Party Type Party Type Whether the cookie is first-party or third-party. Learn more | 3rd-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 CLID?
The CLID cookie is set by Microsoft Clarity, a behavioral analytics tool that provides heatmaps, session recordings, and aggregated usage data. This specific cookie stores a unique string identifier and is used to track the first time Clarity saw the user across any website that has the Clarity script installed.
Because the cookie is set on the clarity.ms domain, it operates as a third-party tracking cookie. This allows Microsoft to attribute cross-site page views to the same pseudonymous identifier across different unrelated websites that utilize the Clarity service.
What are the Privacy Risks of CLID?
Risk Level: Medium
This cookie is classified as a Medium risk because it is a third-party tracking identifier set by Microsoft Clarity. It allows Microsoft to recognize the user's browser across multiple unrelated websites that use the Clarity service.
While it uses a pseudonymous identifier rather than explicit Personally Identifiable Information (PII), this enables behavioral profiling and cross-site tracking of the user's interactions, clicks, and scrolling patterns over an extended period.
How to Remove CLID from a Website
To remove the CLID cookie, the website administrator must remove the Microsoft Clarity tracking snippet (the Clarity JavaScript loader) from the website's source code, or delete the Microsoft Clarity tag from the tag management system (e.g., Google Tag Manager) that deploys it. The cookie is set by Microsoft on the clarity.ms domain (server-side, as an HTTP-only cookie) as a mandatory part of how Clarity operates, so it cannot be disabled independently while keeping the Clarity service running. Consequently, removing the Clarity script entirely is the reliable way to stop this cookie being set, which will also disable heatmaps, session recordings, and behavioral tracking provided by Clarity.