Baseline visit Older format: some facts reconstructed, descriptive only

www.npr.org

Requested addresshttps://www.npr.org/

Oct 19, 2026, 11:08 AM UTC

cut short: the fingerprint observer could not read one or more Web Workers the page started, so the fingerprinting evidence is incomplete; the scanner's search for a privacy-policy link did not cover every link on the page, so privacy-policy findings are incomplete; derived from status and warnings

View site history Scan this exact route again

Evidence quality

This report is built on an incomplete visit

Incomplete evidence: evidence was cut short before completion (the fingerprint observer could not read one or more Web Workers the page started, so the fingerprinting evidence is incomplete; the scanner's search for a privacy-policy link did not cover every link on the page, so privacy-policy findings are incomplete). Counts for the affected evidence are lower bounds; families that completed carry only their ordinary limits. The evidence receipt states the exact per-visit quality.

What this actually means

npr.org recorded 566 fewer third-party requests in the visit configured for Brave-list blocking.

The visit with no blocking made 698 requests; the visit configured to apply Brave's ad-block engine and default Shields filter lists (a simulation in this scanner's browser, not a live Brave-browser visit) recorded 566 fewer third-party requests. The blocker directly stopped 22 requests; the remaining difference may include follow-on requests that never started once their sources were blocked, plus run-to-run variance.

23tracking-service entities

652cross-site requests

181third-party cookie records

≥3fingerprint-like patterns retained

Plain-Language Findings

What this visit means

Unfamiliar terms are defined in the glossary

playwright-chromium

Review-worthy

Bottom line: this visit has review-worthy signals

The scan observed signals a non-expert should not have to decode from raw request tables. Some detector evidence was incomplete; each affected detector card states its own retained or unavailable scope, while completed request, cookie, and storage measurements keep their recorded exactness.

The cards below translate the evidence into plain language. Where a measured distribution exists, severity ranks this visit against percentiles from this report's cohort, with each percentile card naming its metric-specific measured-site denominator; otherwise it uses fixed reference thresholds. That cohort is drawn from a curated set of popular, mostly commercial sites, not a random sample of the web. The request log, domain table, and methodology remain below for verification.

698 requests observed in one controlled visit.

Worth checking

338 requests matched Brave Shields filter lists

338 requests matched the default filter lists of Brave Shields, the ad and tracker blocker built into the Brave browser, while loading normally.

Computed with Brave's own ad-block engine and default filter lists in classification mode: matched requests were not blocked by the scanner and remain in this report's observed request counts. Matching shows what Shields would target on this visit's traffic; an actual Shields visit blocks these and also prevents their follow-on requests, so this number is neither a measured block count nor the total effect.

The hand-curated service catalog separately matched 248 request rows in this visit.Show matched requests

Not flagged

Lower values observed across comparable metrics in the Brave-list blocking attempt

The blocking visit ran with the scanner configured to apply Brave's ad-block engine and default Shields filter lists. It was a simulation in this scanner's browser, not a live Brave-browser visit, and application was not verified. Compared with the unblocked visit, it showed 566 fewer third-party requests, 179 fewer third-party cookies and 247 fewer tracking-related service requests.

Services only seen in the unblocked visit: Google, PubMatic and Magnite, plus 20 others. The blocking visit's engine directly blocked 22 requests; the remaining difference may include follow-on requests that never started once their sources were blocked. A single paired comparison can also reflect run-to-run variance (ad rotation, caching, experiments), so treat this as an observed difference, not a measured blocking rate.

Signed per-metric differences between the two visits; nothing is summed across metrics.Show matched requests

Worth checking

Consent tooling and requests to tracking-service entities appeared before any choice

www.npr.org sent a request to OneTrust, a consent management platform (the tooling that shows cookie banners). The request log included 23 distinct catalogued tracking-related services before the scanner made any consent choice; 22 companies answered.

A request to the platform's loader proves the page attempted to fetch consent tooling; an observed response supports delivery, but neither fact proves a banner was visibly shown to this scanner. Banner display can vary by region and visit context. The scanner never clicks a banner in this mode, so this report records requests made before the scanner made a consent choice. It does not determine whether any request required consent or whether the site's behavior complied with applicable law. More tracking-service entities or requests may appear after "Accept" than this report captures, so the counts here are lower bounds for users who consent.

Consent platform detected via a request to cdn.cookielaw.org.

Context

Tracking companies the privacy policy does not appear to name

PubMatic, OpenX and Index Exchange, plus 6 others were sent requests during this visit, but the policy text matched none of the names this scan knows those companies by.

Policies often disclose vendor categories rather than company names, so an unnamed vendor is a transparency gap worth reviewing, not automatically a violation. Named in the policy: Google and LiveRamp.

Policy at https://www.npr.org/…/privacy-policy; 0 checkable statements matched; 2 of 11 observed tracking companies named in the policy. Policy mentions of Magnite, Amazon Ads and Equativ are unknown because the historical alias matcher was incomplete.

Review-worthy

Requests were dispatched to catalogued service domains

Google, PubMatic and Magnite, plus 20 others appeared in the request log.

A catalog match identifies a maintainer-reviewed service/domain mapping; it does not establish why an individual request occurred, what it carried, or whether profiling happened. Functional catalog labels include analytics / tag management, advertising and advertising / supply-side platform. This scan could not identify 102 of the 145 third-party hosts recorded here, so it cannot say who operates them. That is a limit of identity coverage, not evidence about the site. Catalog labels include session-replay or behavior-analytics services: Crazy Egg; the domain match alone does not prove that a recording occurred. The role taxonomy assigns these additional services explicitly non-tracking operational, support, security, consent-management, or hosting roles: Datadog.

652 cross-site requests across 145 third-party hosts.At or above the 90th-percentile mark for third-party domains across the 90 sites measured for this metric. High distinct tracking-service entities count (at or above the 12 reference threshold).Show third-party requests

Context

Requests were dispatched to catalogued major-platform domains

This visit dispatched requests to catalogued domains for Google and LinkedIn.

The domain matches identify services, not the requests' purpose, payload, or whether any profile linking occurred.

54 requests to these platforms.Show catalog-matched requests

Not flagged

Google Analytics present, no remarketing signal

Google Analytics was observed, but no DoubleClick remarketing sync appeared in this visit.

Standard analytics collection was observed, without the stats.g.doubleclick.net advertising sync.

Google Analytics host observed; no stats.g.doubleclick.net request.Show catalog-matched requests

Review-worthy

Third-party cookies were present

181 third-party cookies showed up during the visit.

The scanner observed cookie metadata whose domain crossed the scanned site's registrable-domain boundary. This report does not retain cookie values or partition keys, so it does not establish whether a cookie was a persistent identifier or could recognize a visitor across sites.

224 cookies total in this report.At or above the 90th-percentile mark for third-party cookies across the 90 sites measured for this metric.

Worth checking

Input-monitoring signal involving a third-party script

Listener coverage that could observe typing-related input events was registered through call chains that included a third-party script.

This is a behavioral instrumentation signal from listener registration, stack-attributed script origins, and known-vendor requests: it shows the page was instrumented to observe interaction, not that anything was transmitted. Stack attribution records the script origins present in the bounded registration call chain. A cross-site origin in that chain does not by itself establish that the cross-site script registered the listener. That is because first-party code can register its own listeners through a helper served from elsewhere. A different registrable domain is also not by itself a different operator: sites commonly serve their own scripts from a separate asset domain. The card therefore says third party only when the catalog or reviewed ownership attributes an origin to another organization. On scanners that run the active keystroke-capture probe, actual transmission is tested separately (a synthetic value is typed, never real input, and no typed values are collected). Treat this card as a review prompt rather than proof.

Session-recording listener coverage: 551 interaction-listener registrations with https://cdn.cookielaw.org/, https://cdn.cxense.com/ and https://cdn.piano.io/, plus 12 others in the registration call chain. Input-monitoring listener coverage: 168 input-listener registrations with https://cdn.cookielaw.org/, https://cdn.cxense.com/ and https://cdn.piano.io/, plus 7 others in the registration call chain. Known session-replay vendor(s): Crazy Egg.

Worth checking

Behavioral fingerprinting heuristics matched

At least 3 behavioral heuristics matched in retained evidence: Canvas fingerprinting heuristic, Canvas font probing heuristic and Offline audio rendering heuristic.

These heuristics look for behavior patterns such as canvas readback after drawing, repeated canvas font measurement, WebGL entropy reads, offline audio rendering, or WebRTC peer-connection setup. They are review prompts for this visit, not proof of cross-site identity tracking.

Canvas fingerprinting heuristic: 2 canvases matched; reads: canvas.toDataURL. Canvas font probing heuristic: 69 measureText calls across up to 57 fonts; measured text contents are not stored. Offline audio rendering heuristic: 1 offline render with audio.OfflineAudioContext.createAnalyser, audio.OfflineAudioContext.createDynamicsCompressor and audio.OfflineAudioContext.createOscillator, plus 2 others.

Raw evidence

Open the interactive evidence explorer

The findings above are built from the stored report. Load the request rows, domains, cookies, storage keys, browser signals, visit phases, charts and CSV export when you want to check them; the versioned report JSON is always available below without this interface.

This versioned report is currently retained in the public corpus. Follow the currently retained site history, repeat the same public route when it is available, or request a transparent evidence correction.

Integrity and provenance

Evidence receipt

Open report JSON Open provenance sidecar Printable version Download PDF + evidence Open PDF

Report ID: 20261019-35a2deb55fb041d4989532b0c0690449
Site: www.npr.org
Latest visit: Oct 19, 2026, 11:09 AM UTC
Schema: v1 schema · facts legacy-derived · descriptive report

Verify recorded provenance

Baseline visit

Started: Oct 19, 2026, 11:08 AM UTC
Run quality: cut short: the fingerprint observer could not read one or more Web Workers the page started, so the fingerprinting evidence is incomplete; the scanner's search for a privacy-policy link did not cover every link on the page, so privacy-policy findings are incomplete; derived from status and warnings
Scanner: playwright-chromium
Browser: 153.0.8010.12
Redaction: not recorded by this schema
Provenance: Exact build and instrument digests were not recorded by this legacy schema.

Variant visit

Started: Oct 19, 2026, 11:09 AM UTC
Run quality: cut short: the fingerprint observer could not read one or more Web Workers the page started, so the fingerprinting evidence is incomplete; the scanner's search for a privacy-policy link did not cover every link on the page, so privacy-policy findings are incomplete; derived from status and warnings
Scanner: playwright-chromium
Browser: 153.0.8010.12
Redaction: not recorded by this schema
Provenance: Exact build and instrument digests were not recorded by this legacy schema.

Recorded provenance is self-reported measurement metadata, not a cryptographic attestation. The public versioned report JSON contains the retained public evidence; see the methodology for interpretation and retention limits.

This report covers what the scanner measures, not everything a site can do. 17 browser surfaces are not instrumented at all (Every page except the one that was scanned; Anything that only loads after scrolling or interaction; Why a request happened, as a causal chain; and 14 others), 3 capabilities are declined by policy, and 3 are outside what any single visit can see. Their absence from this report is not evidence that they did not occur. Read the published coverage boundary.

Detector accuracy is unmeasured. No calibration study currently publishes a precision or recall for the detectors on this page, so a detector match here is a recorded observation, not a calibrated classification. How detector accuracy is measured.

Severity percentiles come from this report's exact schema, methodology, tracker-catalog, ServiceRole-taxonomy, metric-contract, producer, and Global Privacy Control cohort. Each percentile card's measured sites are among 99 sites with a successful load across all cohorts. Other methodologies, request-capped visits, and post-choice consent visits are excluded from each card's denominator, while failed or block-page attempts are outside that coverage.

Approved use boundary: This report is investigative evidence that requires independent corroboration. It is not a standalone legal determination and not the sole exhibit in a legal proceeding. Recorded in this project's release manifest on 2026-08-02.