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To: Windflier; Snowyman

http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actually-sells-data-to-a-514417864


25 posted on 01/08/2015 6:06:40 PM PST by Durus (You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. Ayn Rand)
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To: Durus
If you look hard enough, you can find a contrary opinion on just about any tech subject (or product) you can name. No surprise to see that there's an article knocking Ghostery.

That's not to say that every contrary article is a malicious hit piece - just that there are opinions pro and con about everything out there.

From the article at your link:

...you've heard us mention Ghostery. It's a solid privacy tool, but Mashable reports that you should stay away from its opt-in "GhostRank" feature, which sells data on the ads you block to the ad companies themselves.

Basically, their 'GhostRank' is an opt-in feature that I've never enabled, so at the very least I'm not participating in their data gathering campaign. Secondly, what GhostRank does, doesn't directly affect your personal privacy anyway - it simply gathers bulk information on ad blocking, which is then sold to advertisers to help them understand the ad blocking behavior of consumers in general.

No one at Ghostery is selling my private browsing info to anyone.

Here's a response from Adam DeMartino at Ghostery:

"The data we collect in GhostRank doesn't contain any information about the actual ads that were seen by panel members. Rather, we simply report on the technologies that are used to deliver those ads, the performance characteristics of the URLs those technologies were seen on, and if the user blocked that particular technology company. GhostRank can't see the actual ads or anything about the criteria that were used to target them."

I still like Ghostery and think it's a great tool, though I'm aware that there are other tracker blocking tools out there.

27 posted on 01/08/2015 6:27:41 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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