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This page contains details about the cookie policy for the PayPal Community Forum. For information about the specific cookies and cookie management options for PayPal.com please visit the PayPal.com cookie page Statement on Cookies and Tracking Technologies. Any options to manage your cookies on PayPal-Community.com do not automatically apply to your cookie management settings for PayPal.com.

PayPal Community Cookies

The PayPal Community uses cookies to manage user sessions, survey participation, track opt-in and opt-out of specific features and obtain analytics about Community user behavior to help us understand how to improve and protect the community.
The PayPal Community platform is hosted by Lithium Technologies which uses cookies for many of their out of the box community functionalities.A copy of their cookie data sheet has been included below with edits based on PayPal's implementation of their platform.

Lithium Cookies Datasheet

We classify the cookies typically found on Lithium communities into the four broad categories described below.
Type Classification Description Example
1 Strictly necessary These cookies are necessary for the proper functioning of the community, such as tracking a user session, or accessing secure areas. Session cookie used to pin a logged-in session to a browser
2 Performance The information these cookies collect is anonymous and is used to collect aggregate data including information about the pages users visit. Cookies delivered by Omniture WebAnalytics and Google Analytics for purposes of aggregate reporting
3 Functional These cookies allow websites to remember preferences and settings, such as your username, language, region, font size, and so on. Cookie used to hold a user's username as part of a "remember me" feature
4 Tracking, targeting and sharing These cookies remember that you've visited a website, a particular web page, and/or track your activities on the site. This information is sometimes shared with third party advertisers for serving targeted online advertising or other personalized content. Cookies used to track visitor activity on an individual basis can be used by Lithium or its third party business partners to serve personalized content, and/or later aggregated and used to analyze website traffic and trends.
Also, you may choose to consult an external and independent third party website such as AboutCookies.org or www.youronlinechoices.eu if you are in the European Union which provides comprehensive information on a variety of browsers and how to control or change their respective privacy settings.

Cookies used by Lithium

The following standard cookies are used by Lithium Community platform.
Disabling or removing these cookies may have an adverse impact on the proper functioning and user experience on the Community.

Community cookies

Cookie Name Type Description and Purpose Expiration Time/Type If removed, disabled, or not accepted
_ga 2 Distinguishes users using a unique ID. It is used by Google Analytics to calculate visitor, session, and campaign data. By default, the configuration setting that sets this cookie is disabled. 2 years(persistant) Visitor and session data will not be tracked and will not be available to Google Analytics
!lithiumSSO:{client_id} 1 Used for passing authentication information to Lithium session SSO will not be functional for the user
LiSESSIONID 1 Session management session User cannot log in, and is treated as an anonymous user
lia.anon.{setting or config name} 3 Stores community-wide configurations and settings for anonymous users 1 year(persistant) Community behavior will follow defaults and any UI convenience changes made by the user will be ignored.
lithium.anonymous.usersetting.{setting name} 3 Remembers user preferences 1 year(persistant) The community will not remember the user's setting preferences
lithium.anonymous.usersetting.profile.language 3 Remembers language preferences 1 year(persistant) The community will not remember the user's language preferences. The language will default to the native language defined for the community.
lithiumLogin:ppl 3 Keeps users logged in when they make a request after their session has expired. It is triggered when a user checks Save login name and password. The cookie is encrypted and includes a unique user secure ID in the database. 30 days (persistent) The "auto login" and "remember me" features will not work
LithiumNotifications 3 Temporarily stores Realtime Notification messages (Toast messages) session Realtime notification toasts may not appear (pop-up) after a page transition.
LithiumUserInfo 1 Session management session The user will not be able to view secure pages and will be redirected to the login page
LithiumVisitor 4 Replaces VISITOR_BEACON. Lithium currently uses both for backward compatibility. This cookie computes billing visits, registered billing visits, visits, registered visits, and unique visitors metrics. The cookie is encrypted and stores when it was first issued, when it was last seen by Lithium, an unique visitor ID (which is unique per visitor's browser). Default = 10 years Visits and unique visitors metrics will not be accurate.
P{poll_id}U{user_id}R{reset_count} 3 Tracks when a user has voted in a poll and tracks the answer value. The cookie is used to prevent a user from voting multiple times in a single poll. 1,000000+ days (persistent) If the user is an anonymous user, the user will be able to vote multiple times when the cookie is cleared. If the user is logged in, votes, and then clears the cookie, they are not allowed to revote.
PushyAuthToken 1 Authenticates the user for a session with Realtime Notifications service (Pushy) Manually cleared when the user logs out or when their session expires due to inactivity WebSocket connections to the Realtime Notification service will fail with a 403 Forbidden error and the user will not see realtime notifications.
VISITOR_BEACON 4 Computes billing visits, registered billing visits, visits, registered visits, and unique visitors metrics. The cookie is encrypted and stores, when it was first issued, when it was last seen by Lithium, the user ID, and its own unique ID. 10 years Visits and unique visitors metrics will not be accurate.
VISITORID 1 Distinguishes between human and bot traffic 3 years(session) Impacts bot detection mechanism.
ValueSurveyParticipation 3 Stores a timestamp storing the creation time of this cookie, which is used in value survey trigger logic. Default is 90 days. Configurable in Community Admin The user will get multiple prompts to take a survey
ValueSurveyVisitorCount 3 Stores the survey visit count of the user, which is used in logic that determines when a survey is triggered. This cookie is used in conjunction with the ValueSurveyParticipation cookie. When the ValueSurveyParticiation is set, the count for ValueSurveyVisitorCount cookie is reset to 0. Expires when the ValueSurveyParticipation cookie is either set or expires The user will not be prompted to take a survey if a minimum number of visits is set before a survey is offered.

Other cookies used by PayPal-Community.com:

Cookie Name Type Description and Purpose Expiration Time/Type If removed, disabled, or not accepted
emp 3 Remembers if browser has been used to log into the community as a PayPal employee to provide employee specific login button. Persistant Employee login button does not appear.
acctsharingoptout 3 Remembers if logged in user has decline offer to share their PayPal account country and account type with other community members. This cookies prevents the community from proactively asking the use if they want to share if they choose "No thanks". 90 days The user will see the window asking them if they want to share their country and account type each time they post a new topic in the community.
{alertid} 3 Local Storage Cookie. Cookie names will vary based on the specific alert. Alerts are small banners in the community that display on all or many community pages. These alerts have a small "X" icon that users can click to hide the alert after it has been read. The cookie is used to remember if the customer has hidden the specific alert associated with the alert id to keep it hidden for that user. Persistant All hidden alerts will appear for the user, even if the user hides them.
eu-cookie 3 Local Storage Cookie. Remembers if user has closed the cookie notification browser that appears on every page. Persistant The cookie banner will show for the user if this cookie is removed or blocked.
disclaimer 3 This cookie is used to track when a logged out community visit has acknowledged the first time visit disclaimer which advises the user about the community terms and conditions. 7 days If the cookie is removed or blocked, the user will see the disclaimer pop up on every page load of the community.