What does plos.org track?
Before any consent, plos.org loaded 3 tracking companies and set 8 advertising or analytics cookies.
That's more tracking companies than 58% of the 2,450 sites we scanned.
Scanned October 2, 2026 from Germany, loading plos.org once and clicking nothing. How we scan
- Tracking companies
- 3
- Tracking cookies
- 8
- Third-party hosts
- 19
- Cookies in total
- 22
Consent banner
No known consent management platform was detected on the page.
Companies contacted before consent
2 of the 4 companies it contacted before consent were social media companies.
- LinkedIn4 requestsSocial media
snap.licdn.com, px.ads.linkedin.com
- X (Twitter)3 requestsSocial media
static.ads-twitter.com, t.co, analytics.twitter.com
- HubSpot16 requestsAnalytics
js.hsforms.net, js.hs-banner.com, forms-na1.hsforms.com, track.hubspot.com
Other third parties (content delivery, consent, functional, unclassified)
- Google7 requestsFunctional
fonts.gstatic.com, fonts.googleapis.com
Cookies set before consent
The longest-lived tracking cookie it set was muc_ads, from X (Twitter), lasting about 13 months.
| Cookie | Purpose | Set by | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| __hssc | Advertising | plos.org | Under a day |
| __hssrc | Advertising | plos.org | Session |
| __hstc | Advertising | plos.org | 6 months |
| bcookie | Advertising | linkedin.com (third party) | 12 months |
| hubspotutk | Advertising | plos.org | 6 months |
| lidc | Advertising | linkedin.com (third party) | 1 day |
| muc_ads | Advertising | t.co (third party) | 13 months |
| personalization_id | Advertising | twitter.com (third party) | 13 months |
| _twpid | Unclassified | plos.org | 13 months |
| _twsid | Unclassified | plos.org | 13 months |
| __cf_bm | Functional | plos.org | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | hsforms.net (third party) | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | hs-scripts.com (third party) | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | hs-banner.com (third party) | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | hsadspixel.net (third party) | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | hs-analytics.net (third party) | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | hsforms.com (third party) | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | twitter.com (third party) | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | t.co (third party) | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | hubspot.com (third party) | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | linkedin.com (third party) | Under a day |
| li_gc | Functional | linkedin.com (third party) | 6 months |
The page also wrote 1 key 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.