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I used to love Ghostery, until I learned that their business model is to resell your browsing habits and profile back to advertisers. If you want a suggestion

by uxp 11y ago

I used to love Ghostery, until I learned that their business model is to resell your browsing habits and profile back to advertisers. If you want a suggestion for an alternative, I really don't have one. I'm currently using µBlock, which isn't bad, but requires a bit more setup than Ghostery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock

aroch 11y ago
>until I learned that their business model is to resell your browsing habits and profile back to advertisers. ...If you voluntarily opt into that program (Ghostrank), after reading the straight-forward description. I don't understand why people find their business model so abhorrent when its entirely opt-in and they don't weasel around what ghostrank does. Surely you must find every service on the internet that you use for free, particularly Google, to be horrible as well?
- d_theorist 11y ago
  Yes. I have no problem with their model. They are completely open about it and it does me no harm. Ghostery does exactly what I need.
Kenji 11y ago
I also use µBlock. It made me realize what a huge crapload of JavaScript the websites include. On most sites, you can have like 70% of the external-domain content blocked and the site keeps working as intended. Hackernews is beautiful in that regard, literally just stuff from ycombinator.com and news.ycombinator.com. I love this simplicity.
- d_theorist 11y ago
  Yes. It is refreshing - and sadly rare - to see Ghostery tell me 'No trackers found'.
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andreasvc 11y ago
disconnect.me is an alternative. That in combination with a hosts file works very well for me; especially because it uses much less memory compared to adblock.
andypants 11y ago
> their business model is to resell your browsing habits. This is what the ghostery options screen says about the data they (optionally) track: > This data is about tracking elements and the webpages on which they are found, not you or your browsing habits.

by uxp 11y ago

aroch 11y ago

>until I learned that their business model is to resell your browsing habits and profile back to advertisers. ...If you voluntarily opt into that program (Ghostrank), after reading the straight-forward description. I don't understand why people find their business model so abhorrent when its entirely opt-in and they don't weasel around what ghostrank does. Surely you must find every service on the internet that you use for free, particularly Google, to be horrible as well?

d_theorist 11y ago
Yes. I have no problem with their model. They are completely open about it and it does me no harm. Ghostery does exactly what I need.

Kenji 11y ago

I also use µBlock. It made me realize what a huge crapload of JavaScript the websites include. On most sites, you can have like 70% of the external-domain content blocked and the site keeps working as intended. Hackernews is beautiful in that regard, literally just stuff from ycombinator.com and news.ycombinator.com. I love this simplicity.

d_theorist 11y ago
Yes. It is refreshing - and sadly rare - to see Ghostery tell me 'No trackers found'.

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andreasvc 11y ago

disconnect.me is an alternative. That in combination with a hosts file works very well for me; especially because it uses much less memory compared to adblock.

andypants 11y ago

> their business model is to resell your browsing habits. This is what the ghostery options screen says about the data they (optionally) track: > This data is about tracking elements and the webpages on which they are found, not you or your browsing habits.