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Ghostery seems to have fallen completely out of favor for this behavior, replaced by the EFF's Privacy Badger, actual ad-blockers, and even some browser built i

Ghostery seems to have fallen completely out of favor for this behavior, replaced by the EFF's Privacy Badger, actual ad-blockers, and even some browser built in functionality. It would be interesting to know which other privacy plugins that sell data. Current recommendations seem to be pretty unanimously favoring plugins which do not, but it is always a moving target.

o-__-o 7y ago
“If it’s free, you’re the product” strikes again
pythux 7y ago
Hi, I work on the Ghostery extension. In addition to my answer regarding the business model of Ghostery above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897809. I'd like to add a few things to address your points: (1) Ghostery did not "fall completely out of favor", as far as I can see. It is true that in _some communities_ (in particular some sub-reddits), some people tend to recommend different addons instead (often not based on any technical arguments, though), but this is not a trend that can be generalized (more people continue to recommend Ghostery as a very solid privacy protection suit). (2) EFF's Privacy Badger is not a replacement for Ghostery, for more information about why, we wrote about it in the past[1][2]. (3) Ghostery has an "actual ad-blocker" built-in, in fact, it is one of the most efficient out there as was shown in a study that we published this year[3]. The adblocker as well as benchmarks are open-source and anyone can run them locally to verify the claims. We also more recently wrote extensively about the internals of this adblocker[4]. References: [1]: https://whotracks.me/blog/how_cliqz_antitracking_protects_users.html https://whotracks.me/blog/how_cliqz_antitracking_protects_us... [2]: https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-19/blocking-tracking-without-blocking-trackers.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-19/blocking-tracking-without-b... [3]: https://whotracks.me/blog/adblockers_performance_study.html https://whotracks.me/blog/adblockers_performance_study.html [4]: https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-20/not-all-adblockers-are-born-equal.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-20/not-all-adblockers-are-born...

o-__-o 7y ago

“If it’s free, you’re the product” strikes again

pythux 7y ago

Hi, I work on the Ghostery extension. In addition to my answer regarding the business model of Ghostery above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897809. I'd like to add a few things to address your points: (1) Ghostery did not "fall completely out of favor", as far as I can see. It is true that in _some communities_ (in particular some sub-reddits), some people tend to recommend different addons instead (often not based on any technical arguments, though), but this is not a trend that can be generalized (more people continue to recommend Ghostery as a very solid privacy protection suit). (2) EFF's Privacy Badger is not a replacement for Ghostery, for more information about why, we wrote about it in the past[1][2]. (3) Ghostery has an "actual ad-blocker" built-in, in fact, it is one of the most efficient out there as was shown in a study that we published this year[3]. The adblocker as well as benchmarks are open-source and anyone can run them locally to verify the claims. We also more recently wrote extensively about the internals of this adblocker[4]. References: [1]: https://whotracks.me/blog/how_cliqz_antitracking_protects_users.html https://whotracks.me/blog/how_cliqz_antitracking_protects_us... [2]: https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-19/blocking-tracking-without-blocking-trackers.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-19/blocking-tracking-without-b... [3]: https://whotracks.me/blog/adblockers_performance_study.html https://whotracks.me/blog/adblockers_performance_study.html [4]: https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-20/not-all-adblockers-are-born-equal.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-20/not-all-adblockers-are-born...