Count me amongst the users of Ghostery who didn’t know it was owned and supported by the ad industry:
Whenever discussion starts about how to hide from the tracking code that follows users around the Web to serve them targeted ads, recommendations soon pile up for a browser add-on called Ghostery. It blocks tracking code, noticeably speeds up how quickly pages load as a result, and has roughly 19 million users. Yet few of those who advocate Ghostery as a way to escape the clutches of the online ad industry realize that the company behind it, Evidon, is in fact part of that selfsame industry.
Evidon helps companies that want to improve their use of tracking code by selling them data collected from the eight million Ghostery users that have enabled a data-sharing feature in the tool.
Full Story: MIT Technology Review: A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry
(via Paleofuture)
June 17, 2013 at 10:09 am
Next time “working inside vs. outside the system” comes up, this will be my contribution to the (short) conversation.
June 17, 2013 at 11:07 am
Cant this be disabled by disabling ghost rank?
June 17, 2013 at 11:12 am
Yes, it’s an opt-in program.