What is the OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie?
Records whether the site visitor has interacted with or closed the cookie banner to prevent it from reappearing.
Table of Contents
About the OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie
| Vendor | OneTrust |
|---|---|
| Category Category The functional category of the technology, such as Web Analytics or Social Media. Learn more | Advertising & Paid Media |
| Consent Category Consent Category The consent category this cookie most commonly falls under across sites we scan, normalized into four standard categories. Learn more | Strictly Necessary |
| 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 20.7% 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 | Mixed |
| 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 | Low |
| Vendor Privacy Policy | https://www.onetrust.com/privacy-notice/ |
| Vendor Website | https://www.onetrust.com/ |
What is the purpose of the OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie?
The OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie is a strictly necessary, first-party cookie set by the OneTrust Consent Management Platform (CMP). Its primary purpose is to register when a user interacts with the cookie banner (such as clicking 'Accept', 'Reject', or closing the banner interface). By storing this interaction state, the CMP knows not to repeatedly display the cookie notice to the same user on subsequent page views until the cookie reaches its expiration. While actual granular consent preferences and framework strings are typically stored in the OptanonConsent or eupubconsent-v2 cookies, OptanonAlertBoxClosed functions purely as a user interface state-management mechanism to track the banner's visibility status. Per OneTrust documentation, once the user has consented or interacted with the Banner/Preference Center, this cookie is dropped to prevent the banner from re-appearing until it expires or is deleted.
What are the Privacy Risks of the OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie?
Risk Level: Low
The OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie is classified as Low risk because it is a strictly functional component used solely by the OneTrust Consent Management Platform to remember if a user has dismissed the privacy banner. According to official OneTrust technical specifications, this cookie contains no information that can identify the website visitor, nor does it store tracking tokens or behavioral profiles. It operates as a simple user interface preference flag to prevent the banner from reappearing on subsequent pages.
How to Remove the OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie from a Website
To remove the OptanonAlertBoxClosed cookie from a website, the website administrator must completely uninstall and remove the OneTrust Consent Management Platform (CMP) deployment scripts - specifically the SDK stub loader (otSDKStub.js) and the banner script (otBannerSdk.js) - from the site's source code or tag management system. This cookie is a core, mandatory component of the OneTrust compliance infrastructure used to track the initialization and closure of the user interface. The vendor does not provide any administrative configuration, dashboard toggle, or API flag to disable this specific cookie independently while keeping the cookie banner active. Therefore, it cannot be isolated or suppressed without entirely removing the OneTrust service from the website.