This settlement resolves a class action alleging that trackers embedded on Forbes Media's websites collected California visitors' IP addresses and unique identifiers without consent and passed them to third parties for ad targeting. If you are a California resident who read a Forbes site any time between December 20, 2023 and June 11, 2026, you can claim a share of a $10 million fund — no receipts, no purchase, and no Forbes account required — but the window shuts November 9, 2026.
Current Status
Claims are open. A Proof of Claim form must be submitted online, or a paper form mailed and postmarked, no later than November 9, 2026 — the official documents give that date without a time or timezone, so treat it as a hard date. The separate deadline to exclude yourself from the class or to object is earlier, on September 24, 2026. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California has granted preliminary approval and the notice program is running; the Final Approval Hearing is set for December 2, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time in San Francisco. No final approval order has been entered and no payment date has been announced.What Changed Recently?
The claim window opened. The Court preliminarily approved the settlement and the Claims Administrator, Kroll Settlement Administration LLC, has stood up the official settlement website and the online Proof of Claim form. The case is Berman, et al. v. Forbes Media LLC, Case No. 3:24-cv-09287-WHO, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.The complaint alleges that from December 20, 2023 through June 11, 2026, Forbes collected class members' IP addresses and unique identifiers without their consent using trackers present on its websites, and shared that data with third parties, where it was used to optimize targeted advertising campaigns. The claims are brought under Section 638.51(a) of the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the California Unfair Competition Law, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200. Section 638.51 is the pen register and trap-and-trace provision, a criminal statute written for telephone-line surveillance that plaintiffs' firms have spent the last few years pointing at website analytics and advertising code; our explainers on the California Invasion of Privacy Act and on pen registers and trap-and-trace devices cover how that theory works.
Forbes denies the allegations and denies any wrongdoing. The Settlement Agreement states that neither the agreement nor the negotiations behind it may be construed as an admission or evidence of any violation of law or of any liability, and that the company entered into it to avoid further expense, inconvenience and the distraction of protracted litigation. The Court has not decided in favor of either side.
One thing this settlement is not: it is not the earlier Forbes Facebook video privacy settlement, a separate $7.5 million case in Florida state court over video viewing data allegedly sent to Facebook, whose claim deadline passed in November 2025. Different class, different court, different statute.
Who Qualifies?
The Settlement Class is defined as:All California residents who, from December 20, 2023 to June 11, 2026, accessed websites owned or controlled by Forbes and had their IP addresses and/or unique identifiers shared with third parties as a result of the Trackers present on Forbes's websites.
Three things decide it: California residency, a visit to a Forbes-owned or Forbes-controlled website inside the class period, and the sharing of your IP address or a unique identifier through the trackers on that site. There is no purchase requirement, no subscription requirement and no account requirement — this is a visitor class, not a customer class, which is what makes it unusually broad for a privacy settlement.
The end of the class period is not an arbitrary date. The Settlement Agreement defines the class as running from December 20, 2023 to the Preliminary Approval Date, and the Notice and claim form both fix that date as June 11, 2026 — so the window closes on the day the Court preliminarily approved the deal.
Excluded from the Settlement Class are Forbes and its parents, subsidiaries and affiliates, along with the officers, directors, employees and agents of any of them; members of the immediate families of any officers or directors of Forbes, and the heirs, successors or assigns of any of those people; anyone employed by Settlement Class Counsel's law firms; any judicial officer to whom the action is assigned and their immediate family members; and anyone who timely and validly requests exclusion.
Note that the definition also carries a built-in factual condition — that your data actually was shared as a result of the trackers. The Claims Administrator reviews every claim, and the Proof of Claim form states that a claim may be subject to audit, verification and review, and may be rejected if it is incomplete, untimely, or contains false information.
How Much Can You Get?
No per-person figure has been published, and the official documents deliberately avoid one. Forbes will pay $10,000,000 into a non-reversionary Settlement Fund, and each class member who files a valid and timely Proof of Claim receives a pro rata — proportional — share of what remains after the Court-approved deductions. The Notice says the amount of the payment will depend on how many Settlement Class Members timely submit valid Proof of Claim forms, and nothing more precise than that is knowable until the claims period closes.The deductions come out of the same $10,000,000. Settlement Class Counsel may ask the Court to approve attorneys' fees of up to 25% of the fund, which works out to $2,500,000, plus reimbursement of the expenses and costs of prosecuting the action, and incentive awards of up to $2,500 for each of the two class representatives. Notice and administration costs and any taxes on the fund also come off the top. The Court may award less than any of those amounts, and it decides all of them at the Final Approval Hearing. If you want the arithmetic of how that kind of reduction works, our pro rata distribution explainer walks through it.
How the money arrives depends on how you file. The online Proof of Claim form offers an electronic payment option with a step-by-step guide on the settlement website; a form submitted by mail is paid by check. There is also a redistribution provision worth noting: if any balance is left in the net fund six months after distribution — from uncashed checks, tax refunds or anything else — the Claims Administrator is directed to reallocate it among class members who cashed their checks where that is feasible and economical, with anything still left over going to charitable organizations approved by the Court or escheating under unclaimed property law.
The settlement also carries a non-monetary piece. Within 60 days after the Effective Date, Forbes has agreed to modify its websites to give greater notice of its use of trackers, including in its privacy policy and other consumer-facing disclosures.
What Proof or Notice ID Is Required?
Proof Required: No. No receipts, browsing history, screenshots or account records are needed, and a class member who never received a notice is not locked out — which is the test this site applies before calling anything no-proof.The claim portal has two entrances. If you received a direct email notice, it carries a Class Member ID, and that ID lets you complete the Proof of Claim form online; only one claim may be submitted per Class Member ID. If you did not receive a direct notice, or no longer have the ID, the portal has a second option for exactly that situation. Selecting it returns a message that you are not eligible to file online, and directs you to download the paper Proof of Claim form and mail it, postmarked no later than November 9, 2026.
That paper form has no Class Member ID field on it at all. It asks you to check a box electing to receive a payment, give your first and last name, address, email address and mobile phone number, and sign. The signature is the substantive requirement: you declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States and the State of California that you accessed Forbes.com while in California during the class period of December 20, 2023 to June 11, 2026, and that the information on the form is true and correct to the best of your knowledge.
The one real cost of filing on paper is the payment method. Electronic transfer is offered only to people who file online through the settlement website; a mailed form is paid by check.
Important: the attestation is worded more narrowly than the class definition. The class covers California residents who accessed websites owned or controlled by Forbes; the attestation asks you to swear you accessed Forbes.com while in California. Read it against your own facts before you sign, and if your situation falls in the gap, let the Claims Administrator resolve the claim rather than signing to something that is not accurate.
What Is the Deadline?
November 9, 2026 is the claim deadline. An online Proof of Claim form must be submitted no later than that date, and a paper form must be postmarked no later than that date. The Notice, the settlement website and the claim form all state the deadline as a date with no time of day and no timezone attached, so there is nothing to publish beyond the date itself — filing ahead of it is the safe course.Important: the deadline to exclude yourself from the settlement or to object to it is September 24, 2026, six and a half weeks earlier. Excluding yourself means you are not bound by the settlement and keep the right to sue Forbes separately over the claims this settlement resolves, but you receive no payment; a request for exclusion must be mailed to the Claims Administrator, postmarked by September 24, 2026, and must state that you want to be excluded and include your full name, address, telephone number, email address if any, and signature.
Objecting is the opposite move and a more demanding one: you stay in the class, keep the right to file a claim, and tell the Court why it should not approve the settlement. Objections must be filed with, or mailed to, the Clerk of the Court no later than September 24, 2026, and must include the case name and number, your full name, address, telephone number and email address if any, a written statement of all grounds for the objection with any legal support, copies of any papers or documents the objection relies on, a list of any witnesses, a statement of whether you intend to appear at the Final Approval Hearing, and your signature and your counsel's signature.
Doing nothing has a cost of its own. You stay in the class, receive no payment, and give up the right to sue Forbes and the other released parties over the claims this settlement resolves — including claims you do not know about, since the release carries a waiver of California Civil Code section 1542.
How Do You Take Action?
File through the official settlement website at Media Site Tracker Settlement.com. The site hosts the Notice, the FAQs, an Important Dates page, the downloadable Proof of Claim form and the case documents, and it states that it is the only authorized settlement website for this case. The Settlement Agreement's terms control over any summary of it, including this page.If your email notice gave you a Class Member ID, use it to open the online form — that route also unlocks the electronic payment option. If you have no Class Member ID, choose the option on the site for people who did not receive a direct notice; it hands you the paper Proof of Claim form to print, complete in blue or black ink, sign and mail so that it is postmarked by November 9, 2026. Either way you are checking the election box, supplying your contact details, and signing the attestation. Notify the Claims Administrator through the settlement website if your contact information changes after you file, since a payment that cannot reach you is a payment you do not get.
What Happens Next?
The Final Approval Hearing is scheduled for December 2, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time at the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco. At that hearing the Court decides whether to approve the settlement, rules on Settlement Class Counsel's request for attorneys' fees and costs, and rules on the incentive awards for the class representatives. Attending is optional — Settlement Class Counsel answers the Court's questions — and the Notice warns that the date and time of the hearing may change without further notice, so the official settlement website is the place to confirm it.A scheduled hearing is not an approval order. If the Court grants final approval, the Notice says payments will be distributed as soon as possible once approval becomes final and any appeals are resolved, and it is candid that whether appeals get filed, and how long they take, is unknowable in advance. If the Court refuses approval, or approval is undone on appeal, either side may rescind the agreement and the case returns to litigation.
California's tracker cases have been producing settlements at a steady clip. The LA Times privacy tracking settlement is another California news-publisher case, though its claim window has already closed, and the open settlements list tracks everything with a live claim window.
Sources and Verification
• Official settlement website — Media Site Tracker Settlement.com• Notice of Proposed Class Action Settlement, Berman, et al. v. Forbes Media LLC (class definition, benefits, deadlines, hearing date, release, exclusion and objection procedures)
• Proof of Claim form posted on the official settlement website (general instructions, attestation, payment selection)
• Settlement Agreement, filed as Exhibit 1 to Docket No. 43-3 (fund, plan of allocation, business practice changes, residual funds, Section 1542 waiver, fee and incentive award caps)
• Home page, Submit Claim page and Important Dates page maintained by the Claims Administrator, Kroll Settlement Administration LLC
• Berman, et al. v. Forbes Media LLC, Case No. 3:24-cv-09287-WHO, United States District Court for the Northern District of California
Questions
I never received an email about this settlement. Can I still file a claim?
Yes. The claim portal has two doors. One is for people who received a direct email notice and have a Class Member ID; that ID lets you complete the Proof of Claim form online, and only one claim may be submitted per Class Member ID. The other is labeled for people who did not receive a direct notice or do not otherwise have a Class Member ID. Selecting it returns a message that you are not eligible to file online and directs you to download the paper Proof of Claim form and mail it in, postmarked no later than November 9, 2026. The paper form has no Class Member ID field at all — it asks for your name, address, email and mobile number, and a signature attesting under penalty of perjury that you accessed Forbes.com while in California during the class period. One trade-off to know about: the electronic payment options are only offered to people who file online, so a mailed claim is paid by check.
Is this the same case as the Forbes Facebook video privacy settlement?
No. They are two separate settlements against the same company. The earlier one resolved Video Privacy Protection Act claims about video viewing information allegedly sent to Facebook through the Meta pixel; it covered Forbes account holders and newsletter subscribers who also had a Facebook account, ran in a Florida state court, and its claim deadline passed on November 4, 2025. This case is a California statutory privacy case in federal court in San Francisco about IP addresses and unique identifiers allegedly shared with third parties through trackers, and its claim window is open until November 9, 2026. Being in one class does not put you in the other, and a claim in the earlier case does nothing for this one.
Do I need a Forbes account or subscription to qualify?
No. The Settlement Class definition turns on accessing websites owned or controlled by Forbes as a California resident during the class period and having your IP address or unique identifiers shared with third parties as a result of the trackers on those sites. It says nothing about holding an account, subscribing to a newsletter, or paying for anything. That is a much wider net than the earlier Forbes video privacy case, which required both a Forbes account or newsletter subscription and a Facebook account.
How much money will a claim actually be worth?
The official documents do not publish a per-person figure, and no honest estimate is possible yet. Every approved claim receives a pro rata share of what is left of the $10,000,000 fund after the Court-approved deductions, so the individual amount depends on two unknowns: how much the Court awards in fees, costs and incentive awards, and how many valid claims are filed. Class Counsel may ask for attorneys' fees of up to 25% of the fund, which is $2,500,000, plus reimbursement of expenses and costs, and up to $2,500 for each of the two class representatives; notice and administration costs and any taxes also come out of the fund. The Court may award less than any of those requests.
The class definition says California residents, but the claim form asks whether I was in California. Which is it?
The two are worded differently, and it is worth knowing before you sign. The certified Settlement Class is all California residents who accessed websites owned or controlled by Forbes between December 20, 2023 and June 11, 2026 and had their IP addresses or unique identifiers shared with third parties as a result of the trackers. The attestation on the paper Proof of Claim form is narrower on both counts: it asks you to declare under penalty of perjury that you accessed Forbes.com while in California during the class period. If your situation sits in the gap — a California resident who read a Forbes-owned site other than Forbes.com, or who was travelling at the time — read the attestation carefully before signing it, and let the Claims Administrator resolve the claim rather than signing to something that is not accurate.
Why is the settlement website called MediaSiteTrackerSettlement.com instead of something with Forbes in the name?
Settlement administrators frequently register a generic domain rather than one carrying the defendant's brand, and this is one of those. The site itself is headed with the case name and number and states that it is authorized by the Court, supervised by counsel for the parties, and controlled by the Court-approved Claims Administrator, Kroll Settlement Administration LLC, and that it is the only authorized settlement website for this case. That is the check worth running on any settlement site before entering personal information: the case caption and number on the page should match the ones in the notice you are working from.
Key Dates
| Class Period | December 20, 2023 – June 11, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Opt-Out Deadline | September 24, 2026 |
| Objection Deadline | September 24, 2026 |
| Claim Deadline | November 9, 2026 |
| Final Approval Hearing | December 2, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. PT |
| Official Website | Media Site Tracker Settlement.com |
