California Forbes Readers Have Been Getting Emails About a $10 Million Tracker Settlement. It Is Not the Old $15 Video Case — and Whether a Claim Pays About $186 or About $31 Depends on How Many of 3.9 Million People File by November 9.

If you lived in California and visited a Forbes website between December 20, 2023 and June 11, 2026, you can claim a share of a $10 million fund by November 9, 2026 — online at MediaSiteTrackerSettlement.com with the Class Member ID from the email, or on a paper form mailed to the administrator. No receipts or screenshots are required. What each claim is worth depends entirely on how many people file; the plaintiffs' own papers estimate “approximately $32 to $189 per approved claim.”

The lawsuit was filed on December 20, 2024 by Domenica Berman of Encinitas and Abygael Piehl of San Diego. Its first sentence sets the frame: “This lawsuit concerns Forbes’s surreptitious collection and sharing of data from visitors to its website, Forbes.com.” The complaint names three pieces of third-party code — the LinkedIn Insight Tag, Microsoft's Bing Universal Event Tracking tag and the Adnx tracker built by Xandr — and alleges that, without consent, they sent visitors' IP addresses and other unique identifiers to LinkedIn, Microsoft and other third parties for targeted advertising. The legal theory: the plaintiffs argued the trackers are “pen registers” and “trap and trace devices,” which section 638.51(a) of the California Penal Code forbids anyone to install or use without a court order. Forbes denies wrongdoing.

Why only California? Because the whole case rests on a California statute. The California Invasion of Privacy Act allows $5,000 in statutory damages per violation, and the plaintiffs sued only on behalf of California residents. Multiplied across 3.9 million people, the preliminary approval motion puts Forbes's theoretical exposure at $19.5 billion; it explains the discount by due-process limits on huge statutory awards and by a risk Judge Orrick named in his order: “unsettled questions of Article III standing for CIPA pen register claims.” The fee motion adds another: during the case a California state senator “introduced a bill that would have retroactively carved out the scope of this action from CIPA’s pen register prohibition.” If you did not live in California, you are not in this class, you give up nothing, and there is nothing to file.

Forbes never moved to dismiss. The sides exchanged more than 2,500 documents, the plaintiffs obtained discovery from Microsoft and LinkedIn, and on September 30, 2025 the court asked them to explore mediation. After a full-day session on January 7, 2026 with retired federal judge Suzanne H. Segal, both sides accepted her mediator's proposal on January 13, signed a term sheet on January 30 and the full agreement on April 21. The settlement class is wider than the one in the complaint, which covered only Chrome and Edge users and left out registered users and newsletter subscribers — which helps explain why Forbes account holders in California have been getting the email.

The class, word for word from the settlement website's FAQ: “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.” Excluded are Forbes and its affiliates and their officers, directors, employees and agents, the families of Forbes's officers and directors, employees of class counsel's firms, and the judge and the judge's family.

Notice runs on two tracks. Forbes had to give the administrator, Kroll Settlement Administration, names and email addresses “to the extent reasonably available in Forbes's records” — in practice, people who gave Forbes an email address — and Kroll had to email them within 60 days of the June 11 order, by our count August 10. Everyone else is reached by ads: social, display and YouTube ads, LinkedIn ads aimed at California members, a PR Newswire release on its California newsline, and Google search ads on terms such as “Forbes privacy settlement.” People who got the first email and have not filed get reminder emails 30 and 7 days before the deadline.

The court-approved email template has the subject line “Forbes Media Websites - Class Action Settlement Notice,” shows your name and a Class Member ID, and says “Our records indicate you may be a Settlement Class Member.” The template shows only a placeholder sender (Administrator@XXXX.com), so the From line proves nothing either way. What you can check: the notice sends you to www.MediaSiteTrackerSettlement.com — no “Forbes” in the name, which can make it look unofficial — and that site says “This is the only authorized Settlement Website for this case.” It shows case number 3:24-cv-09287-WHO, Kroll's line (833) 930-0568 and P.O. Box 225391, New York, NY 10150-5391, and its “Submit Claim” button leads to Kroll's filing system at forms.ksacms.com. Typing the address yourself is safer than clicking. The claim asks for name, contact details, a payment choice and a signature; the paper form has no Social Security number field.

An email is not proof that you are in the class. The settlement agreement: “The emailing or receipt of a Class Settlement Notice to any person or entity that is not in the Settlement Class shall not render such person or entity a part of the Settlement Class.” And no email does not mean you are out.

Without a Class Member ID, the site's second button is gated by IP address. The plaintiffs told the court “the settlement website will be configured to only allow users visiting the website from the IP address identified and provided by Forbes’s records to file a claim form online.” When we tried that path from a connection not on Forbes's list, Kroll's page answered: “Based on the information available, you are not eligible to file a claim online.” That is not a rejection: it points you to the two-page paper form, mailed postmarked by November 9 to Berman, et al. v. Forbes Media LLC, c/o Kroll Settlement Administration LLC, P.O. Box 225391, New York, NY 10150-5391. Paper claims are paid by check.

There is only one kind of payment. After fees, expenses, service awards and administration costs come out of the $10 million, the rest is split equally among everyone with an approved claim. There are no tiers, no documented-loss category and no fixed amount; the plaintiffs' motion says every approved claimant “will receive an identical pro rata share.” The estimate of “approximately $32 to $189” is tied to a stated assumption: “claims rates of 1% to 6% observed in comparable privacy settlements,” taken from Kroll's experience in tracker cases against FuboTV, the Star Tribune and Bleacher Report. The settlement website itself gives no number; its FAQ says only that the amount “will depend on how many Settlement Class Members timely submit valid Proof of Claim forms.”

No documents are needed. The claim form's attestation reads, under penalty of perjury under United States and California law: “I accessed Forbes.com while in California during the Class Period (December 20, 2023 to June 11, 2026)” and that the information is true. The form warns that claims “may be subject to audit, verification, and review.” Note the wording: the class is defined by California residence, the oath by having accessed Forbes.com while in California. Only one claim is allowed per Class Member ID.

Online filers can choose ACH direct deposit, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle or a prepaid card, according to the administrator's plan described in the preliminary approval motion; mailed claims get a paper check.

Forbes also agreed, no later than 60 days after the settlement takes effect, “to modify its websites to provide greater notice regarding Forbes’ use of Trackers,” including in its privacy policy. The motion describes this as tools such as a banner or pop-up that let California visitors control how their data is shared, paid for by Forbes outside the fund.

What you give up is broad. Class members release all claims “arising out of or resulting from the alleged disclosure, use, interception, or recording of Settlement Class Members’ IP addresses, unique identifiers, and/or personal information by Forbes and/or the Trackers on Forbes’s websites through the Effective Date,” including unknown claims. Because the opt-out deadline passed on September 24, that release will bind every class member who did not opt out — whether or not they file — if the court grants final approval. Money left after the first round (uncashed checks, for example) is redistributed to claimants who cashed their payments if that is feasible; any remainder goes to non-profit organizations approved by the court or to state unclaimed-property funds. None of it returns to Forbes.

Spread across the whole class, the fund is thin; the plaintiffs' own motion says it “yields approximately $2.56 per class member.” Claims make the difference, because only people who file are paid. The deductions are on the record. The fee motion filed August 7, 2026 asks for $2,500,000 in attorneys' fees (25% of the fund), $118,148.40 in expenses, $2,500 each for the two named plaintiffs, and Kroll's costs, estimated at $133,653 at a 1% claims rate and $188,609 at 3%. Class counsel Susman Godfrey and Don Bivens PLLC report about 902 hours and a lodestar of $881,982.50, so the fee is about 2.8 times their hourly value. By our count the deductions total about $2.76 million to $2.81 million — roughly 28% — leaving about $7.19 million to $7.24 million for claimants.

Our arithmetic: $10,000,000 minus the requested fee, expenses and service awards, minus Kroll's estimate for the nearest claims rate, divided by 3.9 million times the claims rate. Kroll gave cost figures only for 1% and 3%, so the 2% row uses the midpoint and the rows below 1% and above 3% are bounds, not estimates. The plaintiffs' $189 top figure can be reproduced from their April numbers — fund minus fee, service awards and an earlier $121,153 administration estimate, divided by 39,000 — without the $118,148.40 in expenses; with the August figures the 1% case comes to about $186.

Two things are not public yet: how many emails went out, and how many people have filed. Kroll must file a declaration with the number of claims, opt-outs and objections 10 days before the December 2 hearing; that count is the first hard indication of the real payment. For comparison, the plaintiffs' chart of similar California tracker settlements lists the Los Angeles Times case (Mirmalek, $3.85 million) with an estimate of $40.32 to $216.63 per claim, also based on 1% to 6% claims rates. The judge can still cut the fee; any cut goes to claimants.

Of the deadlines, only the claim deadline is still open.

Decided: preliminary approval and the notice plan. Not decided: final approval, the fee award and the Effective Date — under the agreement, the first business day after the time to appeal the final judgment runs out with no appeal, or after any appeal ends. The court's schedule starts payments 14 days later. By our count, if Judge Orrick approves the deal on December 2 and nobody appeals, the 30-day appeal window closes in early January and payments could begin around January 19, 2027. The public docket copies we could see run through August 7 and show no objection, but mailed objections may not be posted yet; an objector's appeal could add many months.

Not the same case: the Forbes VPPA settlement. Searches for “forbes vppa settlement email” mix up two cases handled by Kroll from the same P.O. box. Ramirez v. Forbes Media, LLC, No. CACE-25-011695 in the Broward County, Florida circuit court, covered Forbes account holders and newsletter subscribers nationwide who had a Facebook account and watched a video on forbes.com between July 25, 2020 and December 1, 2022 (one of its plaintiffs, Joseph Lamb, first sued in 2022 in federal court in New York). It was a case under the federal Video Privacy Protection Act: a fund of “up to $7,500,000.00” and “up to a $15.00 cash payment.” Claims closed November 4, 2025; Judge Michele Towbin Singer granted final approval on November 17, 2025. Its site, ForbesVPPAsettlement.com, has posted no payment update; ClaimDepot reported that $15 payments began going out on February 27, 2026. The class periods do not overlap. If the email mentions Facebook or videos, it is the old case; trackers, IP addresses and California mean this one.

Administrator: Kroll Settlement Administration LLC — www.MediaSiteTrackerSettlement.com, (833) 930-0568, Berman, et al. v. Forbes Media LLC, c/o Kroll Settlement Administration LLC, P.O. Box 225391, New York, NY 10150-5391, also for address changes. Class counsel: Krysta Kauble Pachman (Susman Godfrey L.L.P.) and Don Bivens (Don Bivens, PLLC).