(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I've been playing with Ghostery.

What is Ghostery?

Ghostery is a browser tool available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer. It scans the page for scripts, pixels, and other elements and notifies the user of the companies whose code is present on the page. These page elements aren't otherwise visible to the user, and often not detailed in the page source code. Ghostery allows users to learn more about these companies and their practices, and block the page elements from loading if the user chooses.

Interesting to see who's tracking me ! I'm blocking them one by one with no ill effects.

It all started when one of my usual favourite webpage visits triggered a targetted ad spam mail to my phone in 10 seconds, after I viewed an article. This annoyed me greatly.

I've since decided to stop them and turned tracking, cookies, ads etc OFF.

They didn't bother me before, but this just annoyed me as it was so fast and blatant!

Ghostery is for the browser and is very easy to use. The small window at top right shows the trackers who are on each page and it disappears after 10 secs or whatever you set in options.
There's a small icon added to top bar. A right click on this shows the source and a single tick blocks them. Great stuff.

Thanks Tasmod....looks interesting so i'm giving it a try.

C'mon nooby, it's waiting for you...

I discovered Ghostery a little while back and it works great for me.
Also, if one does a mouse over on the icon, you get a list of trackers.
On the forum here, it shows No trackers.

And thank you Tasmod for bringing this great browser plugin to atention.

I have seen this before or something similar. After your recommendation decided to give it a go.
The reason I did not run it previously is because it tracks you.
BUT it gives the option not to be tracked.
Another reason not to use; Ghostery is involved with advertising . . .
. . . however my online gmail account is from the biggest advertising agency in the world - Google

. . . So knowing the above and selecting the right options during the wizard (I decided not to offer feedback). If Ghostery was Open source initiative I might well have done.

Most Puppys have the ad blocker. This too is a good option if you need to use Flash. So I will be using Ghostery for a while.

Is there an Android version?

Ghostery is a great plugin, and also I use adblock plus, no script, betterprivacy. All four combined make it pretty invincible.

Better Privacy plugin so far is not compatible with SeaMonkey 2.5 though.
I am waiting and hoping since I like it too.

Hmmm, modded and moved. It was a present for nooby, never mind.


Lobster,
Ghostery was taken over. I carefully read the terms etc and they specifically do not track you. They ask if you want to help by being tracked but that's an opt in option. There's a full page mission statement.

Unless they change things then I'm more than happy to use it. The amount of trackers so far that I discovered on the pages I visit is amazing.

By far the worse obviously, google and adsense.

Ghostery is not foolproof but they do listen to feedback on their forum. There's a discussion regarding noscript and adblock and to whether they work first or ghostery.

Regarding cookies, turning them off and selecting 'no tracking' in Firefox doesn't always work. I'm assuming that Firefox may have an interest with Google and others, so don't block fully.

After a couple of posts here and another forum I frequent, I've become extremely aware of tracking. Including the worst, positional tracking !!!

I checked my phone over, it's a Black*** with gps. I found 3 apps I had downloaded had turned on the gps and were tracking me in real time !!!

Then I discovered that the gps wouldn't disable. This was down to a piece of software loaded by one of the apps.

What is surprising is, it was a seemingly harmless app to turn on the video light as a flashlight. It required permission to download which I gave but in doing so it appears Rim allow anything to enter the phone.

Well known on the BB forums.

The other tracker, although latent, is gps placed in photo code. Could be used to find your home or anything else you photograph. So don't take pictures of your mistress boys.

The problem with all of the above is of course, they are useful at times but dangerous when used by others.

Thanks Tasmod. It seems to work in background and not pop up to tell me how wonderful it is. Which some blockers do - rather defeating the object . . .
So far I am more than happy and thanks for all the info.

I totally understand the phone scare. My phone is not smart. It is a marketing collaboration with Googal (the well known super search engine). When I plug it in to charge, I have to mount it. A mounted device, connected independently of a firewall to the Internet and its commercial vultures. Does not seem safe . . . but safe enough (no mistress pics)

Ghostery seems good

Surprising that I have not posted in this thread yet?
I post way too often for my own good.

Ghostery I sure did look into it but being me with my lost brain
I thought it was way too steep learning curve for me to go into.

Much appreciated that you made us aware though. I do a bookmark for it.

Dear tasmod,

Hats off for the nice find. I can't believe all the junky trackers around. It works nicely under Linux and also on an old Mac OSX computer that runs Firefox. It doesn't seem to slow down browsing - in fact, by preventing the trackers from loading and sending back information, browsing might actually be faster.

With thanks and kind regards,
vovchik

You guys are so enthusiastic that I feel ashamed for not trying.
Does it work well if one also have Noscript going at same time?

I guess the Ghostery wants one to accept first or else Noscript
don't show it to them either or does that work in parallel so
them are totally independent of each other?

tasmod wrote: There's a discussion regarding noscript and adblock and to whether they work first or ghostery.

nooby, the discussion is here probably.

Ghostery has a feature to remove LSO. I didn't try it though. Maybe it can replace BetterPrivacy in some circumstances.

By the way, Ghostery doesn't seem to be OSS. (The EULA is in the xpi.)

Let me say a word for RequestPolicy here. I think this extension is somewhat underestimated. While Adblock Plus and even Ghostery are much more popular RequestPolicy (in addition to NoScript) does almost the same job and doesn't rely on any external blacklist. With its ability to completely ruin a layout of some pages before the whitelist is populated the extension is not recommended if you don't like the NoScript-style permission management. But if NoScript is OK for you, RequestPolicy can be worth testing. I've compared what Ghostery and RequestPolicy have found on some pages. The lists are almost identical. Some trackers are not shown in the RequestPolicy menu but they are blocked anyway and will appear when the presented ones are allowed.

Also the NoScript ABE feature can be used to block requests.

Just started using Ghostery, its a great find

I have Ghostery, NoScript, and AddBlock+ and I thought I would try checking trackers on a page with both Ghostery and NoScript active.
I had just a few trackers reported by Ghostery.
Then I went to NoScript and selected "Temporarily allow this page".
The number of trackers increased a lot.
So evidently, NoScript also blocks some trackers.

Also, I think Ghostery must block some trackers or maybe all by default.
Because when I check it for the trackers found, they always come up as checked like it is automatically blocking them.

there is an option in the settings -> advanced to block automatically, but it doesn't seem to work for me.

Also, I've come across a problem on hotmail. If trackers are block no emails can be opened. Is it possible microsoft can detect trackers being blocked?

If you cannot open and view your emails, and you think it might be due to a tracker being blocked, that type of thing would worry me as I would wonder who was tracking my emails and why!

But I run Seamonkey and when at MSN.COM I click on Hotmail.
I am taken to the Hotmail page and can see all of the headers for the messages I have received. But I cannot open any of them!
If instead, I just use Seamonkey's mail I can open and read the messages.

I do not know what changed with Hotmail or Seamonkey that I can no longer open messages when using Seamonkey though.

can you not open messages in Seamonkey even with everything unblocked?