What does forbes.com track?
Before any consent, forbes.com loaded 2 tracking companies and set 3 advertising or analytics cookies.
That's fewer tracking companies than most sites we scanned: 56% of the 2,450 sites we checked loaded more.
Scanned October 2, 2026 from Germany, loading www.forbes.com once and clicking nothing. How we scan
- Tracking companies
- 2
- Tracking cookies
- 3
- Third-party hosts
- 15
- Cookies in total
- 18
Consent banner
The page loaded IAB TCF (unidentified platform), a consent management platform. Everything below was recorded before anyone answered it. 2 tracking companies still loaded while it was unanswered.
Companies contacted before consent
3 of the 7 companies it contacted before consent were functional companies.
Other third parties (content delivery, consent, functional, unclassified)
- forbesimg.com46 requestsUnclassified
i.forbesimg.com, specials-images.forbesimg.com
- Ketch8 requestsConsent banner
global.ketchcdn.com, cdn.ketchjs.com
- Google27 requestsFunctional
www.gstatic.com, www.google.com, fonts.gstatic.com, storage.googleapis.com
- JW Player12 requestsFunctional
cdn.jwplayer.com, placement-prd.jwpltx.com, ssl.p.jwpcdn.com
- DataDome2 requestsFunctional
js.datadome.co, api-js.datadome.co
Cookies set before consent
The longest-lived tracking cookie it set was _swb, from Demandbase, lasting about 13 months.
| Cookie | Purpose | Set by | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| _swb | Analytics | forbes.com | 13 months |
| _vwo_ds | Analytics | forbes.com | 30 days |
| _vwo_sn | Analytics | forbes.com | Under a day |
| blaize_session | Unclassified | forbes.com | 5 months |
| blaize_tracking_id | Unclassified | forbes.com | 13 months |
| notice_gdpr_prefs | Unclassified | forbes.com | 12 months |
| _vis_opt_s | Functional | forbes.com | 3 months |
| _vis_opt_test_cookie | Functional | forbes.com | Session |
| _vwo_uuid | Functional | forbes.com | 12 months |
| _vwo_uuid_v2 | Functional | forbes.com | 12 months |
| AWSALB | Functional | www.forbes.com | 7 days |
| AWSALBCORS | Functional | www.forbes.com | 7 days |
| usprivacy | Functional | forbes.com | 30 days |
| _ketch_consent_v1_ | Necessary | forbes.com | 13 months |
| _swb_consent_ | Necessary | forbes.com | 7 days |
| _vwo_consent | Necessary | forbes.com | 12 months |
| datadome | Necessary | forbes.com | 12 months |
| us_privacy | Necessary | forbes.com | 30 days |
The page also wrote 11 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.