• Ghostery

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Overview

Ghostery has a rating of 3.5 stars from 10 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally satisfied with their purchases. Ghostery ranks 16th among Privacy sites.

  • Service
    1
  • Value
    1
  • Shipping
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  • Returns
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  • Quality
    1
How would you rate Ghostery?
Top Positive Review

“Real good”

Garland L.
6/11/21

Real good ad blocker. No virus. Blocks all trackers and strict ad blocking makes it a really good ad blocker!

Top Critical Review

“Unistalled - Limiting Workflow”

Brandon T.
2/23/20

Ghostery was preventing Dropbox from syncing and also limiting installation of software from Autodesk (AutoCad/Revit). I did not have an opportunity to remedy the problem. I found myself almost daily quitting the Ghostery application when it started. The program should not limit daily workflow and operation of well-respected applications unless it is providing a specific alert as to why it should be doing so. Ultimately it was easier to uninstall than to troubleshoot.

Reviews (10)

Rating

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Thumbnail of user garlandl22
1 review
0 helpful votes
June 11th, 2021

Real good ad blocker. No virus. Blocks all trackers and strict ad blocking makes it a really good ad blocker!

Service
Value
Shipping
Returns
Quality
Thumbnail of user ronk
139 reviews
1,046 helpful votes
June 18th, 2013

Here's how Ghostery (a consumer Ad Blocking system) describes how they work:

"Be a web detective.

Ghostery is your window into the invisible web tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons that are included on web pages in order to get an idea of your online behavior. Ghostery tracks over 1,400 trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity."

Millions of consumers use ad-blockers hoping to get away from all that flash marketing which can be such an annoyance.
A report today (06-18-13) says that one of the most popular ad-blocking services, Ghostery, is collecting data about your browsing habits all the time it's blocking ads, allowing its parent company, Evidon, to sell that data to advertisers!

"This is not a scheme," MIT quotes Scott Meyer, Evidon's CEO, as saying. It's helpful to give advertisers Ghostery's data because advertisers don't generally want to target people who have opted out of advertising, he says.

B. S. If a company is in bed with advertisers, almost certainly selling results of your browsing habits. Better to not be in bed with Ghostery on the consumer side.

Someone related to Evidon or Ghostery is bound to squeal in response to serious allegations.
Best
Ron
**************
UPDATE 05-13-15: Web Security is a serious thing. I've gotten two questions recently about the app "Ghostery", my review of which appears above. I'm not an IT/networking guru. I rely on research I've done, and use common sense. I have LifeHackers spin on Ghostery, AND, a response to LH's thoughts by the company which owns Ghostery. All in all, a fairly comprehensive look at the product, from both sides. I'm going to paste Lifehacker's thoughts, along with Ghostery's response below.

While lengthy, it's all the info you'll need to made a good decision about using the app. Hope this helps. If you disagree with what I've leave, that's fine. No need to write and argue about it. Do as you please:_____________________________

LIFEHACKER'S SPIN:
Ghostery is owned by Evidon, a company that collects and provides data to advertising companies. It has a feature called GhostRank that you can check to "support" them. The problem is, Ghostery blocks sites from gathering personal information on youbut Ghostrank will take note the ads you encounter and which ones you block, and sends that information back to advertisers so they can better formulate their ads to avoid being blocked. The data is anonymous, and Ghostery still does everything it promises to do to protect your privacy.

You could argue this is a good thing, and that it'll help advertisers create better, less intrusive ads. The other argument is that GhostRank is a tool to build a better mousetrap, as it wereunblockable ads and better tracking cookies. That's not lost on privacy advocates:

A major source of business for Evidon is selling data that helps ad companies ensure their compliance with AdChoices, a self-regulatory program supposed to help people opt out of targeted ads. Some experts say AdChoices is confusing to consumers, and it has been criticized by U.S. and EU policymakers. "Evidon has a financial incentive to encourage the program's adoption and discourage alternatives like Do Not Track and cookie blocking as well as to maintain positive relationships with intrusive advertising companies," says Jonathan Mayer, a Stanford grad student and privacy advocate active in efforts to develop a standard "Do Not Track" feature for web browsers.

EVIDON'S REPLY:: Adam DeMartino, of Ghostery, reached out to offer his side of the story. He says: 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.

Hit the link below to read the full story at Mashable, and then check out our favorite privacy protection tools if you need more options. Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry | Mashable

Alan Henry
6/19/13 3:10pm
Well that's irritating. I guess I'll be sure Ghostrank is off.

Alan
6/19/13 3:16pm
I always found Ghostery rather bothersome when I tried it some years ago. Always found it easier to use Trueblock, and to tell Mozilla/Firefox/SeaMonkey to prevent 3rd party cookies & to let me choose which cookies to allow.

Frank
6/19/13 3:15pm
Yeah, this definitely cuts both ways (and I've been tweaking the piece because I don't want it to come off sensational) - it's opt-in, and when we were talking about it, we were both "this is great! The data they get will help them build less crappy ads that everyone doesn't just want to block" and "yeah, but having your privacy extension owned by an ad company is kinda scummy" at the same time. Ultimately, we just wanted to throw up the warning - both about the feature and the company - so people can make an educated decision.

* I still use Ghostery, and have changed my previous rating from ONE star, to FOUR, I feel the app works. There will always be a security risk, even marginally so, when you use security apps like these. Idea is to get significant benefit, while giving the least away.
"Disconnect" is an alternative to Ghostery. Check out a comparison in this forum: http://bit.ly/1bQCS0D

Thumbnail of user justinr169
2 reviews
10 helpful votes
September 27th, 2018

Ghostery has totally lost their user trust when the users found out that they were actually selling user data to other advertisment companies. I guess they are regaining their reputation after Cliqz, the German browser company bought the ad blocker. Cliqz in combination with Ghostery works pretty good and blocks most of the ads.

Thumbnail of user brandont99
1 review
3 helpful votes
February 23rd, 2020

Ghostery was preventing Dropbox from syncing and also limiting installation of software from Autodesk (AutoCad/Revit). I did not have an opportunity to remedy the problem. I found myself almost daily quitting the Ghostery application when it started. The program should not limit daily workflow and operation of well-respected applications unless it is providing a specific alert as to why it should be doing so. Ultimately it was easier to uninstall than to troubleshoot.

Thumbnail of user robbiem19
4 reviews
21 helpful votes
February 3rd, 2013

I've been using Ghostery for quite awhile & it is my #1 blocker.

The UI is extremely intuitive. Access to more info on every site it filters is an invaluable resource for me. It is very easy to add / remove blocking, which is helpful to see what blocks might be preventing a website's functionality.

I highly recommend!

Thumbnail of user joshw33
4 reviews
84 helpful votes
August 31st, 2013

Very easy to use and a great concept. Why should we not be able to choose our own privacy levels and what we are exposed to online?

Thumbnail of user gregh96
4 reviews
6 helpful votes
April 6th, 2019

Lately I have been unable to view many web sites because of AdBlock+ - or so I thought. Even after I whitelisted a site, I was still blocked from seeing it, so I uninstalled AdBlock+. I STILL could not view the sites. That's when I began getting pop-ups saying that Ghostery was preventing me from seeing the site. Ghostery? I had never installed that software. It was, somehow, installed on the sly. So I removed it. Now my system is back to normal. Very disturbing.

Thumbnail of user chriso1
654 reviews
3,550 helpful votes
October 20th, 2010

A useful Firefox add-on, this examines every page you visit and reports on the invisible trackers, bugs and beacons that may be being used to monitor your activities. These are normally associated with ad distributors, and Google, though it isn't that hard for anyone to follow you around without your knowing, if they have the skills to implement the code.

There is an option to view a caption which overlays a small area of the page, listing all the services discovered, or to have a link in your toolbar or both. A very nice touch is the capability to then visit the Ghostery reference page which describes known information about that service.

You also have the opportunity to block any of these services, if you don' t already have other blocking add-ons doing that for you.

It's a revealing and helpful add-on that doesn't seem to have any negative aspects at all. Recommended, along with Ad-block Plus, Flashblock and NoScript as basic security measures.

Thumbnail of user controlf
1 review
26 helpful votes
June 12th, 2014

My Last version of Ghostery was VERY effective and allowed me to block ALL trackers on each site. The newest version PRETENDS to allow me to block trackers but has a select group of trackers, "Twitter Button" on this site for instance. That are UNBLOCKED and won't be blocked no matter how many times I engage the blocking feature. I assume some of these sites MUST be paying ghostery a fee to prevent them being blocked. I'm MUCH less satisfied with the newest version of the program than previous versions.

Thumbnail of user lorrainew3
112 reviews
591 helpful votes
September 1st, 2011

I visited the site a few weeks ago. It seems to be pretty cool. I looked into reviews before using ghostery. I am trying it out for the first time. Ghostery offers these tools. Alerts users about the web bugs, ad networks and widgets on visited web pages. News, screenshots and download. Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity. Ghostery is your window into the invisible web tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons that are included on web pages in order to get an idea of your online behavior. So far I have found this extension to be helpful. Although it is something I have never used before. I think it is pretty cool. There are so many sites you can't trust. Maybe ghostery can help make you feel a little safer. I hope others on Site Jabber check it out. I have not complaint's on this site so far. Ghostery seems to be a pretty cool little detective.

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Download the Ghostery privacy browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge. Get the Ghostery Privacy App for iOS and Android.

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