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htmlcookiesgoogle-apiovh

Why does my static html page put cookies on the viewer's browser?

I host a simple (static) html page on a subdomain host by OVH. There is nothing else on this subdomain.

The webpage uses standard html things plus a <img> tag whose src is

https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=300x300&cht=qr&choe=UTF-8&chl=<DATA>

When inspecting my browser, I found that two cookies are found for this subdomain:

First one:

Name: 300gpBAK
Content: R4178757645
Host: <my subdomain>
Path: /
Expires: creation time + 1h

Second one:

Name: 300gp
Content: R588125346
Host: <my subdomain>
Path: /
Expires: creation time + 1h11

So my question boils down to: where do they come from? Is it from Google API? Why are they bound to my subdomain instead of chart.googleapis.com?

Solution

  • It looks very much like a cookie that's been added by the hosting company (OVH).

    Looking at https://tools.digitalpoint.com/cookie-search?name=300gp, it reveals about 85 pages of domains that have that cookie set.

    Executing whois on the IP addresses associated with a couple of these, I always get:

    inetnum:        213.186.33.0 - 213.186.33.255
netname:        OVH
descr:          OVH SAS
descr:          Shared Hosting Servers
descr:          http://www.ovh.com
country:        FR