Cookie Notice Details the Tracking Tools Used on a Major Art News Site
Before a reader even reaches an article, a different kind of disclosure often appears first: a cookie notice. One prominent art publication’s consent screen lays out, in unusually granular terms, the specific cookies and third-party services that support everything from account logins to analytics and embedded video.
The notice divides cookies into three broad categories: “strictly necessary,” “performance,” and “targeting.” The “strictly necessary” group is described as essential to core site functions such as user login and account management, with the warning that the website “cannot be used properly” without them.
Among the cookies listed under this category are ADFEAuthCookie (a session cookie tied to user profile functionality) and amplify-signin-with-hostedUI (set for one year, also described as required for user profile functionality). Several entries relate to Airtable, including brwConsent (a short-lived cookie used to record consent), Host-airtable-session, and Host-airtable-session.sig (both set for one year and described as supporting secure session management and authentication for Airtable integrations or content). The notice also names AWSALBTGCORS, an Amazon Web Services cookie set for one week, described as supporting load balancing so that page requests route consistently during a browsing session.
The same section includes analytics-oriented identifiers such as parselyvisitor and parselysession (attributed to Parsely Inc.), along with tan.adaa and a Mixpanel-formatted cookie string (mp[abcdef0123456789]{32}mixpanel). These are described as determining whether a visitor is new or returning.
Under “performance” cookies, the notice points to Google Analytics tools, including _ga (set for one year and one month) and a second Analytics cookie, gaD1RNXB11V5, described as persisting session state. It also lists Stripe’s “m” cookie (m.stripe.com), described as supporting performance and optimization for payment processing, including browser caching to improve load times.
The “targeting” category is framed as cross-site identification used by content partners or ad networks to build interest profiles or serve relevant ads elsewhere. In that section, the notice highlights YouTube cookies tied to embedded video: YSC (a session cookie), VISITORINFO1LIVE (set for roughly six months), and VISITORPRIVACYMETADATA (also set for roughly six months), described as storing consent and privacy choices for interactions with the site.
Taken together, the list offers a snapshot of how contemporary media sites are assembled: authentication layers, analytics suites, payment infrastructure, and embedded platforms, each leaving its own small trace in a browser. For readers, the disclosure is also a reminder that “consent” is rarely a single switch. It is a set of permissions that can touch identity, behavior, and preferences, even in the seemingly quiet act of reading about art.
