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Free Firefox Add-in Let's you Know Who's Tracking You
Ghostery is a small Firefox plug that scans any web pages you visit and alert you if the page contains any web bugs.
And what are web bugs?
"A Web Bug is a graphics on a Web page or in an Email message that is designed to monitor who is reading the Web page or Email message. Web Bugs are often invisible because they are typically only 1-by-1 pixel in size"
Web sites use web bugs to learn more about you and your web behavior in much the same manner that they use cookies. Indeed web bugs are often used together with cookies to learn as much about you as possible.
Did I hear you say you turn off cookies?
Well, according to the Wikipedia article on web bugs: "Turning off a browser's cookies can prevent some Web bugs from tracking a customer's specific activity. The Web site logs will still record a page request from the customer's IP address, but unique information associated with a cookie cannot be recorded. However, Web site server techniques that do not use cookies can be employed to help track a site's cookie-blocking users."
In plain English they are saying that turning off cookies helps preserve your privacy but web bugs can still be used to learn something about your behavior. Not good.
Some folks try to kill web bugs by turning off graphic images in their browser. It's overkill if you ask me and it's not entirely effective anyway.
There are various products that clain to automatically kill web bugs but save your money; these are not fully effective either.
The free Ghostery Firefox plug-in is a simple free solution. When you visit a web page it alerts you to the presence of web bugs by turning its liitle red tray icon from gray to red. It also shows you a list of the bugs being used and the company behind them.
It not only detects web bugs but "3rd party widgets, analytics, ad networks" in use at the site you are visiting.
For most users web privacy is not an issue. For those who consider privacy important, Ghostery is a useful information tool that makes you fully aware when information is being gathered about you.
For example if you visit this website with Ghostery installed you will discover that we use Google Analytics to record our web site usage statistics.
Now Google Analytics is harmless enough but it's useful and comforting for a visitor to our site to know we use Google Analytics and nothing else.
Thanks to regular contributor Lex Davidson for alerting me to this plug-in.
Gizmo
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Comments
I am a fan of ghostery as it does an excellent job of informing you of the sites that are tracking your activities on the internet (web....whatever). It is different from other FF addons in that it primarily looks at "tracking" sites as opposed to "ads" (i.e. adblock plus). The little ghost in the lower right side is gray until it spots a tracker. It then turns to red and in addition there will appear a popup (upper right) that informs you of the sites seen. This popup disappears in 15 seconds (which can be changed). By clicking on the "ghost" you will see a menu which will includes the names of the trackers. By clicking on the individual items, you will get further details of what that site is trying to accomplish. You have the option on turning on/off the popup window, changing the time for the popup window to remain displayed, checking the list of tracking sites (all on/all off or individual check of each site listed). Whether you opt to block the sites or not is up to the user but it certainly is invaluable for letting you know just how many sites are out there tracking your movements on the internet (I was surprised at the numbers). Try it for if nothing else, the information you learn is worth the time and effort (which is not that much). This input is not intended to replace the original evaluation of this software but merely a supplement to that item. Enjoy the day.
I think the little ghostie is supposed to turn from green to red when it finds a bug on a visited page. But the little ghostie is so small down there on the bar that I cannot tell what color it is or even see it turn color if it encounters a bug.
I d/l and installed this FF add-on, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to use this. I see purple boxes on the referenced sites for fedex. etc. but clicking them does nothing and there's no doc on the Ghostery website.
Thanks for this tool. Was searching for something like that for a long time.
Yeah, this is great but it seems to be an 'after the fact' notification. I'm more interested in PRE-vention.. Any suggestions aside from the cookie & graphics shut downs?
Thanks
Anything out there for Opera? - Dz
Thanks for checking out Ghostery I really appreciate it!
Cheers,
David Cancel
Good products are always welcome here David.
Gizmo
Many filters used with Adblock Plus for Firefox block Google Analytics.
This sounds like a good tool, though.
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