What does branch.io track?
Before any consent, branch.io loaded 4 tracking companies and set 3 advertising or analytics cookies.
That's more tracking companies than 70% of the 2,450 sites we scanned.
Scanned October 2, 2026 from Germany, loading www.branch.io once and clicking nothing. How we scan
- Tracking companies
- 4
- Tracking cookies
- 3
- Third-party hosts
- 11
- Cookies in total
- 6
Consent banner
The page loaded OneTrust, a consent management platform. Everything below was recorded before anyone answered it. 4 tracking companies still loaded while it was unanswered.
Companies contacted before consent
2 of the 6 companies it contacted before consent were analytics companies.
- Microsoft Advertising7 requestsAdvertising
bat.bing.com, bat.bing.net
- Snap6 requestsSocial media
tr.snapchat.com, sc-static.net, tr6.snapchat.com
- VWO1 requestAnalytics
dev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com
- Google Analytics1 requestAnalytics
www.googletagmanager.com
Other third parties (content delivery, consent, functional, unclassified)
- OneTrust11 requestsConsent banner
cdn.cookielaw.org, geolocation.onetrust.com
- PPC Protect2 requestsFunctional
client.prod.mplat-ppcprotect.com, click.prod.mplat-ppcprotect.com
Cookies set before consent
The longest-lived tracking cookie it set was _scid, lasting about 13 months.
| Cookie | Purpose | Set by | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| _scid | Advertising | branch.io | 13 months |
| _scid_r | Advertising | branch.io | 13 months |
| sc_at | Advertising | snapchat.com (third party) | 13 months |
| __cf_bm | Functional | www.branch.io | Under a day |
| OptanonConsent | Functional | branch.io | 12 months |
| X-AB | Functional | sc-static.net (third party) | 1 day |
The page also wrote 2 keys to local storage, which works like a cookie but isn't sent with requests.
Understanding this page
- How to see which cookies and trackers a website loads
A hands-on walkthrough for checking what a site sets before you've clicked anything, using Chrome and Firefox's built-in tools, plus how CookieTosser automates the same check every month.
- What counts as valid cookie consent in the EU
The rules that actually govern cookie banners — the ePrivacy Directive, the GDPR consent standard, the Planet49 ruling, the strictly-necessary exemption, and what "reject" has to offer compared with "accept.
- Consent management platforms explained
What a CMP banner is actually doing behind the scenes, how the IAB's TCF standard and Google's Consent Mode v2 fit in, and why a banner being present is no guarantee that nothing loads before you answer it.