# Installed ghostery plugin for firefox...



## UNIXgod (Feb 29, 2012)

All I have to say is holy shit. It's almost sick on how we are being tracked click to click.


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## sossego (Feb 29, 2012)

Nothing smells like the home baked goodness of mass marketing. A lot of these cookies are from companies wanting to make a buck.

Is it ethical? Not in my opinion; and, this is my opinion only.
You should search your legislature for the limits. Privacy laws and the such.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 29, 2012)

Meh. They just want to know what you're interested in so they can target their ads. Don't worry about it. No big deal.


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## bes (Feb 29, 2012)

UNIXgod said:
			
		

> All I have to say is holy shit. It's almost sick on how we are being tracked click to click.


For completeness sake you can try new experimental add-on for Firefox - Collusion .
This page will show you a demo of what you might see if you were surfing the web with Collusion.


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## UNIXgod (Feb 29, 2012)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> Meh. They just want to know what you're interested in so they can target their ads. Don't worry about it. No big deal.



I'm not worried about it. I can always use tor if I'm paranoid. Used it for years on irc.

I just can see the potential for abuse beyond marketeers( i.e. black hats or government agencies). The only sites so far that I've seen that aren't tracking you (via javascripts and cookies) are this forum and it's main site as well as wikipedia.

It is alarming when I see ghostery trigger upwards to 20 blocks when clicking an article linked from a slashdot post.


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## fonz (Mar 1, 2012)

UNIXgod said:
			
		

> All I have to say is holy shit. It's almost sick on how we are being tracked click to click.


FWIW: Ghostery is available for Opera too


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## freethread (Mar 1, 2012)

*M*y sinkhole is deep.


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## throAU (Mar 1, 2012)

Anyone know Ghostery's business model?

I'm wondering what their angle is - how do they make money out of providing an anti tracking cookie program?


I installed it, then Googled them to try and figure out what they get out of the deal and found nothing, so I'm filing them under "dubious" until I find out how they operate.  Not to say we aren't tracked to hell, but I'm wondering if Ghostery are somehow aggregating data some other way with their plugin.

I really should break out a sniffer and find out.


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## ChalkBored (Mar 1, 2012)

throAU said:
			
		

> Anyone know Ghostery's business model?



http://www.evidon.com/solutions/encompass

Ghostery has a 'ghost-rank' thing, supposedly opt-in, which sends anonymized data back to them about what tracking info is on sites you go to.

They then use that information to tell companies that use the Encompass service what their website is actually sending to visitors.


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## DutchDaemon (Mar 1, 2012)

For what it's worth: I don't accept cookies by default in either Firefox or Chrome, only when they're needed to make a site work (e.g. web stores, forums, subscriber services), and I _never_ allow third-party cookies anywhere. In Chrome I use the 'cookie icon' in the address bar to quickly allow/disallow cookies if needed.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 1, 2012)

Cookies will never hurt you. You only miss out by leaving them off. They can't execute anything. Just leave them on. I do. Always have.


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## CoTones (Mar 1, 2012)

Holy trinity for Firefox

_NoScript - RequestPolicy - CookieMonster._


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 1, 2012)

As far as the RequestPolicy addon goes, current browsers no longer allow cross domain access. There are ways around it but I'm not up on that. 

I never understand why people use NoScript. Virtually the whole web is scripted now.

Like I said, I allow all cookies and run all scripts.


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## wblock@ (Mar 1, 2012)

Noscript lets me control which scripts are allowed to run.  Those which provide value to me are allowed to run, the rest are not missed.


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## CoTones (Mar 1, 2012)

Well, RequestPolicy works great - blocks a lot of unnecessary requests.

Why use these - because of content, not a useless crap.
And browsing is, at least, faster and safer.
Thats me. Other people may prefer Google Content Blocker :e


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## fonz (Mar 1, 2012)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> Cookies will never hurt you. You only miss out by leaving them off. They can't execute anything.


Granted, the _danger_ of cookies is highly overestimated. But on the other hand, out of a 100 requested cookies only 5 are useful. And that's a highly optimistic estimate. Some cookies are perfectly legitimate but most of them are only used by advertising companies to present one with ads (which I block anyway) that are *supposedly*(*) tailored towards one's interests.

Back when that whole thing started "we" used to make fun of "those silly Americans", but nowadays everyone in the world and his dog seem intent on bothering everybody with crap that nobody wants  Believe me, it gets annoying real(ly) fast x(

Fonz

Ad (*): I get the general idea, but most spamming algorithms (I have no other word for it!) do a pretty piss-poor job at guessing what people might possibly be interested in x(


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## throAU (Mar 2, 2012)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> Cookies will never hurt you. You only miss out by leaving them off. They can't execute anything. Just leave them on. I do. Always have.



Its not whether they can execute stuff that is the issue.  Cookies can be used to track you, and collect a heap of data on what you are doing on-line.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 2, 2012)

Cookies cannot be used to track what you are doing online. They can only be used by the site you are visiting and what you are doing on their site. My customer's sites have no way of finding out what you were doing before or after visiting them. But we could find out what products you looked at on their site and, thus, target ads refined to what appears to be what you are interested in. Some say that's a disadvantage because you might not see other products but that's a marketing thing. And that doesn't matter either. We just keep track of what pages you visited even if you turn cookies off. And now there's local storage so we don't even need cookies. 

Advertisers have tracked you for decades. This is nothing new.


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## throAU (Mar 2, 2012)

Actually, the cookies from certain sites CAN be used to track you on-line.

e.g.:

Advertiser (e.g., doubleclick, google) sets a cookie.  You visit another site, that uses the same ad provider.  Ad is served, ad server checks it's ad network cookie, checks referrer URL = advertiser knows you (or rather, the browser with your unique cookie) browsed site X.

An ad network as pervasive as the above two will track almost all sites you browse and report the hit pages back to the ad provider.


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## UNIXgod (Mar 2, 2012)

throAU said:
			
		

> Actually, the cookies from certain sites CAN be used to track you on-line.
> 
> e.g.:
> 
> ...



I ran across this link which seems pertinent to the discussion as it shows where re-identification is possible even with anonymous datasets. 

https://epic.org/privacy/reidentification/#process

As drhowarddrfine points out the first-party cookie alone is essentially passive; ghostery is not a panacea.

wikipedia has some interesting info on third-party cookies and privacy for web users as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie#Privacy_and_third-party_cookies

Not to scream fire in a moviehouse; installing ghostery just made me more aware that my tin foil hat may not be as effective as I thought it would be.


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## DutchDaemon (Mar 3, 2012)

http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193399/Where_is_my_privacy


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## freethread (Mar 3, 2012)

lol



> You have zero privacy, anyway
> _Scott McNealy_​


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## throAU (Mar 4, 2012)

freethread said:
			
		

> lol




It doesn't mean we need to make it easier for them


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## T-Daemon (Mar 4, 2012)

Basic info on being tracked by search engines. Another Privacy protecting search engine, sister website -  offering search results from Google, Search Engine Privacy Tips. For those on social media sites - Tracked by social widgets: "Facebook Like button tracks you, even if you donâ€™t click", "Like' Button Follows Web Users" - Ghostery blocks them.

Firefox extensions I use to avoid being tracked: Better Privacy, Cookie Monster, Ghostery,  NoScript + "Preferences -> Privacy -> Always use private browsing mode". Other useful add-on - HTTPS Everywhere.

Background information on privacy issues:
http://privacyrights.org/why-privacy
https://www.eff.org/issues/privacy
http://epic.org
http://worldprivacyforum.org/


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## freethread (Mar 4, 2012)

throAU said:
			
		

> It doesn't mean we need to make it easier for them



Sure. This is a dangerous topic anyway.


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