What does pcworld.com track?
Before any consent, pcworld.com loaded 2 tracking companies and set 0 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.pcworld.com once and clicking nothing. How we scan
- Tracking companies
- 2
- Tracking cookies
- 0
- Third-party hosts
- 5
- Cookies in total
- 5
Consent banner
The page loaded Sourcepoint, 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
2 of the 4 companies it contacted before consent were unclassified.
- Amazon Advertising1 requestAdvertising
aax.amazon-adsystem.com
- Adobe11 requestsAnalytics
use.typekit.net, p.typekit.net
Other third parties (content delivery, consent, functional, unclassified)
- coloradoserves.com3 requestsUnclassified
coloradoserves.com
- b2c-contenthub.com1 requestUnclassified
b2c-contenthub.com
Cookies set before consent
| Cookie | Purpose | Set by | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| _awl | Unclassified | pcworld.com | 13 months |
| _sp_su | Unclassified | pcworld.com | 12 months |
| idg-edition | Unclassified | www.pcworld.com | 12 months |
| vip-go-seg | Unclassified | www.pcworld.com | 30 days |
| __cf_bm | Functional | pcworld.com | Under a day |
The page also wrote 4 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.