Ghostery

I've been using Ghostery for a while now, I install it in every browser I regularly use on the desktop, mainly Chrome and Firefox.  And I guess today I learned I can install it in IE.  So that's what I did.

Ghostery basically blocks things used by web pages to track you, so someone can collect data on your online behavior.  It's easily configurable, so it's pretty easy to tweak on the fly.

When it's blocking something, it pops up a bubble that lets you know what was blocked.  When you are not blocking it pops up a bubble letting you what gets through. You can disable it on some sites, for the entire site, selectively on a page or just pause it from blocking anything anywhere.

You will need to tweak what it blocks on some sites since the "tracking" you want to block is sometimes allowing you to accomplish what you really want to do.  But you can pick and choose so you only disable the blocking of the items you need.  So if a web page feature isn't working, try pausing blocking totally or disabling some blocks one at a time to see if you can get it working.  I always try to let through the bare minimum of active tracking.

Normally I'll disable blocking on service sites I use.  I disable blocking on the logged in pages of my bank/credit union, credit cards, Gmail, Google Drive and most of the sites I need to be logged into for work, so it doesn't interfere with what I'm trying to do.  You can always play with it and try to block as much as possible, but sometimes I just need to get something done.  Do I need to disable it on these sites, I don't know.  I figure better safe than sorry and maybe that will be something I learn in the future for a blog post on another day.


Like I mentioned I've been using Ghostery in Chrome and Firefox for a while now.  I hardly ever use IE (only when I have to, and even then, I don't really have to) but today I learned that Ghostery was available for it and thought I would give it a shot (I don't mean to imply it just came out, only that I just learned about it).  The install went OK for the most part.  My anti-virus software flagged it when I tried to install it (it was a security risk because it was identified as a SecurityRisk.Downldr, which basically means when it is executed (the installer), it goes to a specific Web or FTP site, which the author created, and attempts to download files or update itself, and after download, it runs.  It told me it quarantined the file and deleted it, but part of the install was a restart of IE, where the process seemed to hang when it restarted and tried to run Ghostery.  After the restart I just hit the IE reload icon and it finished fine and took me through the setup wizard.  I'd walk you through the setup wizard, but maybe you should learn something on your own today?

I also like their logo: The little "ghost" guy is pretty neat looking.  When you install it in a browser, that's what you see in your menu/icon bar (the little "ghost" guy).  When he's blue it's on and when he's grayed out, blocking is paused.

BTW - I've used the Ghostery browser on iOS/iPad, and it's OK, I don't love it, so a lot of the time I just get tracked and use Chrome.