5 ms·

Please, if someone from forbes.com is reading this, please disable the full page ad for readers coming via HN. Ghostery counts 15 different types of trackers,

Please, if someone from forbes.com is reading this, please disable the full page ad for readers coming via HN. Ghostery counts 15 different types of trackers, and there are many ads on the page itself.

grimman 13y ago
It's a sad state of affairs when you're basically at war with the content providers. They want all sorts of metrics, and you pay for it in terms of processing, bandwidth and certainly not least your own privacy. Then there's the issue with Ghostery itself being owned by Evidon. http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to-advertisers-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to...
- rosser 13y ago
  Then there's the issue with Ghostery itself being owned by Evidon. I think this is more heat than light. The "Ghost Rank" functionality, whereby anonymous usage data is uploaded to Evidon is opt-in with recent versions of Ghostery, and they have to pay for the engineers that created the tool and keep it up to date somehow...
  - krichman 13y ago
    I switched to disconnect.me a while back because I have a cynical view of a tracker blocker tracking people, even if there is the option to disable it. And for similar reasons I dropped AdBlock when they decided to let companies pay to be unblocked.
    - Amadou 13y ago
      RequestPolicy FTW - unlike those other plugins, it is a whitelisting system so nobody slips through just because they are new. It is also site-specific, so if you want to load up disqus from one site but not any others, you can. https://www.requestpolicy.com/ https://www.requestpolicy.com/ Downside? You have to be more involved by manually whitelisting the necessary sites like CDNs. I've been using it for years and it doesn't bother me, although I'd say 5% of the time I'll just give up rather than work through a list of 10+ cross-site references.
      - krichman 13y ago
        Thank you! I much prefer whitelisting, but had not known about this one.
arbuge 13y ago
Fat chance of that happening with all the money they're making from it: http://adage.com/article/digital/real-money-online-advertising/243464/ http://adage.com/article/digital/real-money-online-advertisi... These kind of untargeted display ads are amongst the lowest ROI ads online, but advertisers still seem all too happy to pony up vast sums for them. They call it "branding", I think.
PhantomGremlin 13y ago
Sigh. Just use Firefox and NoScript. And "clear history when Firefox closes". Close Firefox on occasion. Voila, no full page ad. The Internet will not change its business model to please you. It's you who will need to change your behavior.
- nonchalance 13y ago
  On the computer, these blockers are readily available. On the iPad, however, they are not (chrome for ios, for example, doesn't support any of those extensions)
  - PhantomGremlin 13y ago
    Okay, thanks for the clarification. I see your point. I didn't think of the iPad because, although I have one, I don't do much general browsing with it. E.g. I use the Bloomberg app to connect to their site, rather than use Safari. I surf very little on my iPhone, a bit on my iPad, almost all on my Macbook. Why? Because of screen area. I love being able to crank the font size up to 18 points and still be able to see a decent amount of screen real estate. Just something to look forward to as you get older. :)

grimman 13y ago

It's a sad state of affairs when you're basically at war with the content providers. They want all sorts of metrics, and you pay for it in terms of processing, bandwidth and certainly not least your own privacy. Then there's the issue with Ghostery itself being owned by Evidon. http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to-advertisers-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to...

rosser 13y ago
Then there's the issue with Ghostery itself being owned by Evidon. I think this is more heat than light. The "Ghost Rank" functionality, whereby anonymous usage data is uploaded to Evidon is opt-in with recent versions of Ghostery, and they have to pay for the engineers that created the tool and keep it up to date somehow...
- krichman 13y ago
  I switched to disconnect.me a while back because I have a cynical view of a tracker blocker tracking people, even if there is the option to disable it. And for similar reasons I dropped AdBlock when they decided to let companies pay to be unblocked.
  - Amadou 13y ago
    RequestPolicy FTW - unlike those other plugins, it is a whitelisting system so nobody slips through just because they are new. It is also site-specific, so if you want to load up disqus from one site but not any others, you can. https://www.requestpolicy.com/ https://www.requestpolicy.com/ Downside? You have to be more involved by manually whitelisting the necessary sites like CDNs. I've been using it for years and it doesn't bother me, although I'd say 5% of the time I'll just give up rather than work through a list of 10+ cross-site references.
    - krichman 13y ago
      Thank you! I much prefer whitelisting, but had not known about this one.

arbuge 13y ago

Fat chance of that happening with all the money they're making from it: http://adage.com/article/digital/real-money-online-advertising/243464/ http://adage.com/article/digital/real-money-online-advertisi... These kind of untargeted display ads are amongst the lowest ROI ads online, but advertisers still seem all too happy to pony up vast sums for them. They call it "branding", I think.

PhantomGremlin 13y ago

Sigh. Just use Firefox and NoScript. And "clear history when Firefox closes". Close Firefox on occasion. Voila, no full page ad. The Internet will not change its business model to please you. It's you who will need to change your behavior.

nonchalance 13y ago
On the computer, these blockers are readily available. On the iPad, however, they are not (chrome for ios, for example, doesn't support any of those extensions)
- PhantomGremlin 13y ago
  Okay, thanks for the clarification. I see your point. I didn't think of the iPad because, although I have one, I don't do much general browsing with it. E.g. I use the Bloomberg app to connect to their site, rather than use Safari. I surf very little on my iPhone, a bit on my iPad, almost all on my Macbook. Why? Because of screen area. I love being able to crank the font size up to 18 points and still be able to see a decent amount of screen real estate. Just something to look forward to as you get older. :)