I also like how Ghostery provides URLs for each tracker source (actual payload) that you can easily view on their site.
There's also a database with short description, affiliations and privacy terms for each tracker (e.g. https://www.ghostery.com/apps/google_analytics).
I really appreciate an ethical alternative to tainted Ghostery and hope you guys will catch up soon.
== Disconnect:
* s3.amazonaws.com
* cloudfront.net
* echoenabled.com
* troveread.com
* trove.com
== Ghostery:
* s3.amazonaws.com
* echoenabled.com
* platform.twitter.com
== HTTP Switchboard
* echoenabled.com
For HTTP Switchboard, I could easily identify glancing at the matrix that what was requested was a CSS file, I then proceeded to block with one click anything coming from `echoenabled.com`. The page still displayed properly for all three blockers.
Also of note, with Disconnect and Ghostery, there were some scripts running requesting data from api.echoenabled.com and echoapi.wpdigital.net every few seconds. These requests were blocked by HTTP Switchboard without my intervention to prevent this.
The first thing I tried when I wrote Disconnect was to block every third-party domain. Within an hour, I realized that I broke the whole web. So I built a crawler to identify and categorize the most prevalent third-party services instead. The domains you list under Disconnect would all be categorized as content by our crawler - resources that most people would consider pages broken without and that Disconnect doesn't block by default.
Your going personal. I am talking about the extensions, not you. If for-profit companies are going to claim to care about user privacy, expect this claim to be taken to task, especially in the current era.
Above I am providing hard data, not an opinion.
> "The domains you list under Disconnect would all be categorized as content by our crawler"
The page works fine if whitelisting only the page domain. If someone want the comments, then it's a matter of whitelisting `echoenabled.com`. The rest doesn't appear so important, so I personally rather not ping them. But the point is, I am of the opinion that people need to have the ability to know exactly where their browser connects, then they can agree/disagree/not care. I don't see how one can make an informed decision without proper information.
Now regarding:
http://p.typekit.net/p.gif?a=219379&f=175.10294.10295.10296....
There is no way this 1x1 pixel gif would break a web page. And yet it's not blocked by Disconnect as reported in another comment below. I also reported how adobetag.com is reportedly blocked by Disconnect and yet a script from adobetag.com was downloaded by Disconnect.
Can't you appreciate why I am rather skeptical? Going personal rather than provide a credible answer is not going to dispel this skepticism.
* Chrome, Safari, and Opera give precedence to the newest extension - if that extension blocks a request, older extensions don't see the request.
* Firefox gives precedence to the oldest add-on.
* Disconnect has more than a million active users and Ghostery has more than two million.
* Disconnect is also as public as ABP: https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect.
* I can't seem to see a list of all Google trackers. Some sites have multiple Google trackers, but if I click on the icon to see them it just turns off blocking for them. I'm assuming sites don't have 6 GA trackers, what are the others?
* I can't seem to turn off Content trackers for all sites. Configuring this site-by-site seems clumsy, to say the least.
#2 first: Code to block everything marked as content with one click was either just checked in or is about to be.
For #1: Disconnect groups tracking requests by company. If you want to see all the Google services that Disconnect filters, you could look through the filter list (services are grouped by category and company here, so start at lines 33, 1,882, and 2,326): https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect/blob/b27abbf033c6....
I've never been able to detect any nefarious network traffic caused by Ghostery (and I've looked), but I don't like the games they play, so I'll be pleased to ditch them without ceremony.
I was interested in your project but your smearing of 'competitors' with FUD is seriously disconcerting.
That seems to go against the OS nature of the project.
The unencrypted list is at https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect/blob/b27abbf033c6....
And formatted as JSON at https://disconnect.me/services-plaintext.json.
The encrypted list is also trivial to decrypt with the SJCL code in https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect/blob/master/firef....
Aren't you a former doubleclick-turn-righteous? And don't you also employ an ex-NSA dude?
And no, we do not sell user data, just tracker data.
Cheers!
Ghostery seems to be in the business of selling the data that I forget to tell them they may not collect. This is intrinsically a sneaky thing to do.
Yes I know about and use the "default to blocking" setting, but I don't think there is much argument that Ghostery users download your software with the expectation that the default would be anything else. But it is. And that's sneaky.
So you offer a very useful product, for free, and make money off of the people who fail to configure it so that it performs the only service they would ever purposely download it for.
Again, I have sniffed Ghostery looking for violations of my configuration settings, and never found any. I believe that it follows its configuration settings, and I am thankful for its existence. And I recognize that development and maintenance of it is not free. Presumably you are not a volunteer.
I have gotten value out of Ghostery, but apparently that has been on the backs of other users who want the same thing, but are less-careful than me about reading configuration options, and that doesn't sit well.
This is somewhat wrong: Ghostery, ever since version 1, had Ghostrank feature in it. It has always been an opt-in deal, the users who trust us may turn it on so provide us with data. For the first 4 years the data sat without any use until recently where Evidon figured out how to turn it into money. Even so, the data Evidon sells has nothing about any user, merely tracker data. Here are some samples of whats actually delivered to clients: http://www.knowyourelements.com/ and http://www.evidon.com/evidon-trackermap/tagchains-static.htm....
As I said, we do not trick the users into anything, and are as transparent about where the data goes as possible, if you have suggestions how to increase this then please let us know. We currently cover this question in every listing Ghostery has, all options pages, web site, FAQ, and many posts on our blog.
As far as defaults: originally, Ghostery was a detection software designed to "reveal the invisible web", but has added blocking since. Our official stance is that we do not make decisions for the user, but we do run every user through an install wizard that explains whats up. Disconnects stance here is a different, they do offer default blocking, tho they also have their own "whiteliest" built into it without telling the users about it. We are going to add some easy configuration in the near future that will pre-block stuff, but this is still in the works.
Finally, Ghostery source is available for review for "sneakiness" since every extension is pure javascript. We host it here if you're interested: https://www.ghostery.com/ghosteries/chrome/ and you can just unzip any other extension to extract source.
>Online marketing companies need better visibility into real-world applications of their technologies and those owned by their competitors. GhostRank data is sold as reports to businesses to help them market to consumers more transparently, better manage their web properties, and comply with privacy standards.
> So you offer a very useful product, for free, and make money off of the people who fail to configure it so that it performs the only service they would ever purposely download it for.
I gave some numbers above that show, in practice, just how many users are in one of these unexpected configurations:
> Ghostery's game seems to be tricking users into sending their data to Evidon. Going off the company's own numbers, something like 45% of Ghostery users send Evidon data (by comparison, only 2% of Firefox users share data through Telemetry).
> And how exactly is it trickery if users have to opt-in to the program and they're told what the program does?
Ghostery seems to rely on vague messaging (last I looked, they don't actually say anywhere in their extension that they sell the data you share to ad co's and data brokers) and UX "optimization" (what quesera dubbed the "reconfigure-on-update dance", for example) to get less attentive users to leave blocking off and to send data - as the numbers show.
When you enable GhostRank, Ghostery collects anonymous data about the trackers you've encountered and the sites on which they were placed. This data is about tracking elements and the webpages on which they are found, not you or your browsing habits.
Online marketing companies need better visibility into real-world applications of their technologies and those owned by their competitors. GhostRank data is sold as reports to businesses to help them market to consumers more transparently, better manage their web properties, and comply with privacy standards.
I'd argue that Ghostery should come with a default configuration of ALL trackers and cookies blocked. I'd argue even more strenuously that after the user configures Ghostery manually to do so, ALL should continue to mean ALL even after updates. Ghostery currently has 700 3P cookies in their database, and almost 1700 trackers. There is no valid argument, imho, that a user who configures to block ALL really means "block ALL right now, but if you see any new ones, I would really like to try them out first!"
However, I mostly agree that Evidon has been up front and straightforward about what they do and how they do it. I want to like Ghostery. I do like Ghostery. This little bit of sneakiness though, honestly, taints the whole operation. You can call it an oversight, and I will agree that it can't possibly have much marginal value to Evidon...but it's somewhere between tone-deafness and carelessness, two qualities that call for heightened vigilance.
If you feel strongly that your opinion is important and should be prioritized, please create relevant topic here: https://getsatisfaction.com/ghostery/ and gather support to change it so we address it quicker.
Anonymizing data is hard.
I work on Disconnect. I don't understand why any hacker would still put Ghostery on their machine:
* Ghostery is run by former ad execs (7/9ths of their executive team): http://www.evidon.com/our-team
* They make their money (I've heard tens of millions of dollars per year) selling user data to ad co's and data brokers: http://www.evidon.com/#block-views-from_our_partners-block