To take action on your behalf on a social network, PhantomBuster needs to connect as you. To do this, it needs your session cookies. This will give the Phantom access to your social network account.
For the full tutorial about how to get your session cookies, watch the video below:
What are session cookies?
Every time you log into your social network account, a new cookie is created for that "session" of time that you remain logged into the account. If you log out or are disconnected, the cookie expires. A new cookie is automatically generated once you log in again.
Phantoms are able to connect and automate on your behalf with these cookies.
Don't worry! PhantomBuster doesn't know your password, nor your email address, and these cookies reset when you manually log out of a website.
Get your cookies using PhantomBuster's browser extension
To make your life a little bit easier, we've got a browser extension which will automatically retrieve your cookies for you. You can install this directly from your PhantomBuster account by clicking the "Install Chrome extension" button in the banner at the top:
Alternatively, you can find it within the Phantom's setup:
Or find it here for Chrome or for Firefox.
The extension will work for all Phantoms and social networks on our store, so you only have to install it once. Once you've done this, refresh the page of your Phantom's setup and you'll see a new "Connect to..." button:
Simply click it, and your cookie will populate the box automatically! It'll look something like this:
Get your cookies manually
This tutorial is written for Chrome users. Here's how to access your cookies with Firefox or Safari.
If you aren't using Chrome or Firefox, don't worry. You can still find your session cookies for any site manually.
Open a new tab and go to the website which you want your cookies for. Right-click anywhere on the page and open "Inspect":
Locate the "Application" tab. Then select "Cookies" > "http://www.websiteyoureafter.com". Locate the cookie you're looking for (so, for example, for LinkedIn you'll be looking for the "li_at" value):
Copy this and paste it back into the relevant field in your Phantom's setup.
The table below contains each social network's cookie name should you need to find them:
You're all set!
Take note: make sure not to manually log out of the site you've retrieved your cookie for, as this will cause it to expire, as well as not taking the necessary automation rate limits into account.
If your session cookies are not working, check out this article.
If you think this article does not address your issue, please contact Support directly. We are continuously improving, so your feedback means the world to us!