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Over the last two decades, tracking “cookies” have been core to the sprawl of surveillance capitalism. Websites lodge little nuggets of text—the cookies—on a user’s computer and they act as a kind of badge signalling what sites they’ve visited or what apps they’ve used. Though little discussed in privacy circles today, and despite European laws that ensure people have control over what kinds of cookies can monitor them, these trackers continue to follow users the world over.

That makes them a useful tool for law enforcement, according to two search warrants reviewed by Forbes.

In August 2025, a man called the Hamilton County Courthouse in Ohio and told staff there was a bomb inside the building. Security staff searched the premises with sniffer dogs, but found nothing. They determined it was a hoax.

The search warrants say that investigators linked the caller with an anonymous Gmail email. Investigators then asked Google to disclose what other users had accessed this account. That’s where Google’s cookies proved crucial. The cookies showed that a single iPhone had been used for both the Google account linked to the........

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