Google NID Cookie

Question

I'm not sure if this is the right stack to ask this in so if not please let me know!

I am trying to get a handle on what cookies are used on a site and what they are for. When I initially did a cookie scan I noticed a cookie names NID which was set by google.

I have tried to research this cookie and can see it is used by Google for advertising purposes.

But I am confused about why and where this is being set, the site I am looking at does not use advertising anywhere, although it does use embedded YouTube videos.

Can anyone shed any light on when and why this cookie is set?

Answer 1

according to Google

Most Google users will have a preferences cookie called ‘NID’ in their browsers. A browser sends this cookie with requests to Google’s sites. The NID cookie contains a unique ID Google uses to remember your preferences and other information, such as your preferred language (e.g. English), how many search results you wish to have shown per page (e.g. 10 or 20), and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.

Answer 2

For me, the cookie was hammered incessantly by the url https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=example.org Which was being used by CookieBro & FeedBro RSS feeder browser addons for retrieving icons associated with various domains. The cookie can be dropped by either an addon or by google itself.

I used cookie log via cookiebro addon for firefox & chrome to detect these cookies in realtime, its one of a kind. However I did not realize it was cookiebro dropping them until the next step below.

To see what background connection is occuring when these cookies are placed, enter the following firefox url: about:cache?storage=disk&context= and you will see when and where the google url being connected to.

It is said this cookie is for targeting & ADS and the google's settings are integrated to make the cookie inconvenient to delete for Google users.