What does ft.com track?
Before any consent, ft.com loaded 4 tracking companies and set 5 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.ft.com once and clicking nothing. How we scan
- Tracking companies
- 4
- Tracking cookies
- 5
- Third-party hosts
- 7
- Cookies in total
- 16
Consent banner
The page loaded Sourcepoint, 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 4 companies it contacted before consent were advertising companies.
- Google Ads3 requestsAdvertising
securepubads.g.doubleclick.net
- Integral Ad Science1 requestAdvertising
cdn.adsafeprotected.com
- Chartbeat7 requestsAnalytics
mabping.chartbeat.net, static.chartbeat.com, mab.chartbeat.com, ping.chartbeat.net
- Google Analytics1 requestAnalytics
www.googletagmanager.com
Cookies set before consent
The longest-lived tracking cookie it set was _cb, from Chartbeat, lasting about 13 months.
| Cookie | Purpose | Set by | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| __exponea_etc__ | Advertising | www.ft.com | 6 months |
| __exponea_time2__ | Advertising | www.ft.com | 6 months |
| _cb | Analytics | ft.com | 13 months |
| _cb_svref | Analytics | ft.com | Under a day |
| _chartbeat2 | Analytics | ft.com | 13 months |
| _t_tests | Unclassified | ft.com | Under a day |
| FtComEntryPoint | Unclassified | ft.com | Under a day |
| OriginalReferer | Unclassified | ft.com | Under a day |
| spoor-id | Unclassified | ft.com | 12 months |
| xnpe_d6e5bd4c-9228-11eb-a414-9a67e462410e | Unclassified | bloomreach.ft.com | 6 months |
| __cf_bm | Functional | www.ft.com | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | consent-notice.ft.com | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | images.ft.com | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | runtime-api.ft.com | Under a day |
| consentUUID | Functional | ft.com | 12 months |
| usnatUUID | Necessary | ft.com | 12 months |
The page also wrote 17 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.