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Website is regularly giving HTTP400 Bad Request errors, it's caused by 2 cookies being too big.

I use livestream.com to play live video (using Flash) and seems like they use Akamai Analytics that is setting 4 cookies with my domain. clientLastHTimes clientLastPTimes AkamaiAnalytics_VisitIsPlaying AkamaiAnalytics_VisitLastCloseTime

The first two are the one posing problems with over 8000 characters on last crash.

So tried php way to delete these cookies doing this

  'clientLastPTimes', '', time() - 3600, '/','mydomain.com', false, false


setcookie('clientLastPTimes', '', 1);

Not working.

Then tried to do the same with Javascript on page load AND unload.

function Delete_Cookie( name, path, domain ) {
  + ";expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT";

Delete_Cookie('clientLastPTimes', '/', 'mydomain.com')

These damn cookies are still there. Sometimes it created other cookies with the same name. Found that was usually due to path or domain being slightly different. Tried to just edit their content too, without setting a backward date.

So really struggling with this one. If you have any idea how to delete these cookies or do anything else to avoid HTTP400 cookie overload.... I'd be very greatful.

Thanks a lot


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have you complained to livestream.com about this? it seems like it should be something they need to fix. (having said that, their site seems to be having some Hurricane Sandy related issues at the moment, so I doubt they'll be particularly responsive if you complain to them right now) –  SDC Oct 31 '12 at 17:23
Hey thanks, you do have a point, that is not good practice, nowhere documented that they're using Akamai analytics either. Yea they've been down, didn't even bother writing to them. –  JohnWolf Oct 31 '12 at 17:31
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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Try the code below. Also take note of the following: http://stackoverflow.com/a/6319162/881551


// I am using a larger expiration to account for server timezone differences.
// http://php.net/manual/en/function.setcookie.php#96813

$cookies = array(

foreach ($cookies as $cookie) {
    if (isset($_COOKIE[$cookie])) {
        $_COOKIE[$cookie] = '';
    setcookie($cookie, "", time() - 90000);
    setcookie($cookie, "", time() - 90000, "/", $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], 0); // just in case
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Hey thanks a lot. So tried your code, and get that result. Basically new cookies showing deleted. dl.dropbox.com/u/919737/img/cookies.PNG Is that normal ? Because cookies still show up in Chrome options. –  JohnWolf Oct 31 '12 at 17:38
Seems to look ok. For now...next step is: whoever was responsible (akamai, livestream, or you) for setting these cookies to begin with would need to fix it so future cookie creation requests do not store excessive amounts of data to cause your 400 error. –  Anthony Hatzopoulos Oct 31 '12 at 18:11
Thanks a lot. yea seems like nothing more to do. –  JohnWolf Oct 31 '12 at 18:58
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So for anyone who might have similar issues... I found the source of the problem, the cookie deletion does not really work. It is Chrome the problem, all browser kill session cookies when user exists, but not chrome by default. So need to add option in chrome to kill the session for a specific site. Kind of nuts, but it's a choice Google made to restore the browser as it was when it was closed.

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