Cookies and Smartlook

Smartlook makes use of cookies containing in formation to help identify users in sessions. No personal data will be stored in the cookies.

The following cookie is used to help identify users:

Cookie	Data format	Description
SL_C_23361dd035530_SID	`{ [projectKey]: { sessionId, visitorId } }`	Contains the project key, session ID, and visitor ID. Session and visitor IDs are unique identifiers assigned to new sessions and visitors.
SL_L_23361dd035530_SID	`{ [projectKey]: { sessionId, visitorId } }`	Contains the project key, session ID, and visitor ID. Session and visitor IDs are unique identifiers assigned to new sessions and visitors. Data is stored locally.

The cookies listed are valid for 13 months and can be manually removed by clearing the browser cache.

Other cookies

Cookie	Description
AWSELB cookie	AWS cookie created for efficient load balancing. For more information, see Configure sticky sessions for your Classic Load Balancer - Elastic Load Balancing
SL_C_23361dd035530_DOMAIN	Temporary cookie used to detect the base domain (a.k.a. second-level domain). This cookie is removed as soon as the domain is detected. It helps us share sessions between subdomains and domains if both are recorded in the same project.
SMARTLOOK_LS_QUEUED_CHUNKS	Contains data that is pending to be sent to Smartlook servers. Data is stored locally.

Using Smartlook without server cookies

You can disable cookies in your Smartlook tracking code as seen in the example:

<script type='text/javascript'>
  window.smartlook||(function(d) {
    var o=smartlook=function(){ o.api.push(arguments)},h=d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
    var c=d.createElement('script');o.api=new Array();c.async=true;c.type='text/javascript';
    c.charset='utf-8';c.src='https://web-sdk.smartlook.com/recorder.js';h.appendChild(c);
    })(document);
    smartlook('init', 'SMARTLOOK PROJECT KEY', { "cookies": false });
</script>

Why does Smartlook use cookies and where are they stored?

The use of cookies allows Smartlook to associate sessions (cookie SID) to users (cookie VID) and a corresponding project (cookie KEY).

Also, if you have two domains and record them into the same project, visits to each domain can be connected under one session (cookie DOMAIN). When you replay the session, you can see how the user switched between both of your domains.