ABP with adapted filters is a powerfull solution. For social buttons which is the best solution : antisocial or fanboyz annoyance ?
I've been a long time user of Ghostery on Iron/Chrome, but I'm pretty sure it is superfluous now I'm using ScriptNo. I do miss some of the educational aspects of Ghostery's information, but ScriptNo has WOT ratings for each script discovered. Plus, I have always believed Ghostery seriously slows page loading. I have noticed quite a difference since uninstalling Ghostery on Iron.
I can't remember if it's Ghostery or Disconnect that's owned by an Ad company and doesn't actually block tracking... I'll see if I can find out.
I'm unable to get the sources I was hoping to, I can't remember enough about it. Funnily enough searching for "Scam" and a few phrases brought me to this lol (Not trying to incite, just was a bit of a laugh that I ran into this) http://chromium.hybridsource.org/the-iron-scam I wish I could remember - oh well. It'll hit me later.
I think it was the controversy around the fact that Evidon acquired Ghostery that was behind it all. LOL! Yeah, I've seen it before, still not buying it. I know Ghostery lost quite a few users after Evidon. I don't know about 'Disconnect'. I'm seriously thinking of losing Ghostery on Firefox as well as it is superfluous on that with NoScript & RequestPolicy. It's just that old habits die hard. It's probably still useful on IE though. Not that I use IE a great deal. I did consider using the 64 bit Ghostery on IE 9 for a bit, but I don't know whether it is needed (or would conflict with) as well as Fanboy's anti-tracking filter.
Hey everyone. This is Adam from Ghostery. First, I wanted to thank everyone that uses Ghostery. Second, I wanted to thank everyone here in this thread for your feedback. Nanobot: Are you using that chart to show memory/CPU usage, or something else? It's a very old chart, and it indicates a percentage decrease in tracking. Nobody has performed a more recent study, but Ghostery would probably be a bit higher given we've been improving it for over a year since that came out. Ghostery does have some conflicts with IE. IE is a difficult browser to develop extensions for because of the many technical limitations. We'll be improving it in the future, but for now the other Ghostery extensions far outpace our product for this browser. You'll find that if you have "Block all" turned on in Firefox, for instance, pages load an average of 33% faster. Also, Ghostery is indeed owned by Evidon - formerly called Better Advertising, which is why Hungry Man probably couldn't find the info he was looking for. BA changed its name because, as he pointed out, we sounded like an ad company when our mission is actually to make advertising better by providing privacy solutions. Ghostery keeps its code open for public viewing (and soon it will be open-source), so if anyone is curious they can look. The only info the extension collects is anonymous data that are "donated" via an opt-in feature called GhostRank. This is how we pay for development costs. Finally, Ghostery is both a privacy tool as well as an educational tool. Our core philosophy is that people should be informed about what's happening behind the scenes on the sites they visit, and also that they should be able to control this tracking. All of the extensions mentioned above work well, and can be used in conjunction with Ghostery or not depending on individual preferences. Each has their strengths and weaknesses - Ghostery's are blocking tracking and providing transparency/education into what's going on in the "invisible web." If anyone has any questions, we have a support forum on GetSatisfaction: getsatisfaction.com/ghostery You can also reach me personally at: adam (at) evidon (dot) com. Thanks, A
@Ghostery_adam: Thanks for the feedback & information Adam. I've used Ghostery for quite a while & I have learnt an awful lot from it. I think that I don't need it as much now on Chrome/Iron or Firefox though as I have other extensions, so many in fact I really need to lose a few that have become a bit superfluous. I will still use it on IE when I need to use Internet Explorer however. I think that Ghostery is a good extension & a very good educational tool, ideal for those not so familiar with NoScript & similar. EDIT: I've been comparing Firefox speeds with Ghostery & without it, I'm not sure there is any real difference, so I have opted to keep it. I do find that it can slow Iron/Chrome a bit though, so as long as ScriptNo is working well I think I will be OK without Ghostery on those. Firefox is my main (default) browser anyway.
Hey Adam, thanks for the info. I'll maintain Ghostery here on my Portable Firefox, I didn't experience any slowdowns with your extension and pages really load faster. I use other tools like the ones I cited here; at "first" glance (first on this setup, lol) Ghostery seemed to be useless, but none of my other tools could effectively block things like "sharethis" without some "tweaking" on my part. Ghostery works well out-of-the-box (actually not really "out-of-the-box", but after a very easy initial setup).
Yes, thinking about it, Ghostery would be useful on a portable where something like NoScript & ScriptNo may be a little intrusive or hard work. It works well on Opera as well, as there is no real substitute for it, now that NotScripts isn't being developed.
@Ghostery_adam I'm using the chart to show that with the proper filters you don't need Ghostery plus you have the benefits to save in Cpu/ram usage, and no i wouldn't call this study old. http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6730
I like how Ghostery informs the user who is trying to track your browser. I visit the Time website on a daily bases and it is amazing how many trackers they use. Some pages 17 or higher.
Your chart appears to show that Ghostery can reduce tracking by up to 80% - which is a clear benefit if reducing tracking is your aim. It's really not clear what you are trying to say in that chart.
i dis not vote because i'm just testing it. so how do you folks use this thing? do you block everything and whitelist some sites as you go?
here's a quote from an old post here at Wilders: from here: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1832056&postcount=8 the link is dead about the story from the source code. not to be paranoid or anything but has anyone here seen the source code, knows where it is available, or has heard about anyone who might have seen it? lol
done some research. here's a page from Ghostery's own forum: ---https://getsatisfaction.com/ghostery/topics/source_code_gone_awol_clear_link_please it would seem like this Ghostery can be trusted. for now. lol
No, I don't use Ghostery. Blocking 3rd party cookies + ABP with Easylist and EasyPrivacy is sufficient IMHO. Besides, I'm using Noscript which does the rest.
after testing it for a couple of days and doing some research i have concluded that this addon his safe. i haven't checked the source code or looked at the firewall logs, because i don't have the expertise anyway. so take it for what it's worth. i just voted YES minutes ago as i intend to use this for quite awhile.
