Ghostery (for Chrome)

Editors’ Review

Ghostery (for Chrome)

Ghostery for Chrome prevents advertisers, social media, and other services from collecting your online surfing and shopping behaviors. Although Ghostery is a small add-on, it gives you more control of your online privacy and makes Web browsing safer.

PROS

Discreet design: Ghostery features an easy-to-understand design and a light, welcoming color scheme. The alert bubble is slightly transparent and blends well with the existing webpage, so you can see the content without interruption.

Wonderful execution: Ghostery notified us about dozens of trackers during our tests and let us select which to block. Images and links that we blocked immediately ceased working. We were impressed that stopping a tracker on one website blocked it for all websites.

Personal preferences: You are given the option of sharing your data with Ghostery to make the program more efficient and to share data with advertisers. But this is not mandatory, which is appropriate for those concerned about privacy. Also, you can back up your personal settings for use on another computer or browser.

CONS

Breaks formatting: Ghostery blocks widgets and links perfectly, but this sometimes results in websites becoming “broken” or not viewable. We had to test every blocked tracker individually to see what caused this problem, which consumes more time than necessary.

BOTTOM LINE

Ghostery for Chrome provides you with high-quality service for free. You get full control over which content to block, which is a great way to protect your privacy. Disconnect, a similar application, shows how much bandwidth has been consumed or saved by using the program, and we would enjoy seeing Ghostery include an option like this in the future. If you are concerned about privacy and security, we suggest downloading Ghostery.

Full Specifications

WHAT’S NEW IN VERSION 8.2.6

Version 8.2.6 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

Developer’s Description

Ghostery is an add-on for Google Chrome. Find out who’s tracking your Web browsing with Ghostery. Ghostery alerts you about web bugs, ad networks and widgets on every page on the Web.

DETECT:
Ghostery sees the “invisible” web, detecting trackers, web bugs, pixels, and beacons placed on web pages by Facebook, Google Analytics, and over 500 other ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers – all companies interested in your activity.

LEARN:
After showing you who operates behind the scenes, Ghostery also gives you the opportunity to learn more about each company it identifies, including links to their privacy policy and opt-out options.

CONTROL:
Ghostery allows you to block scripts, images, iframes and objects/embeds from companies that you don’t trust.

COLLABORATE:
Ghostery also includes the optional, opt-in feature called GhostRank, which sends Ghostery servers anonymous information about the trackers you encounter and where you encounter them. This helps us improve and support Ghostery.

PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY:
Ghostery is built and maintained for users that care about their online privacy, and is engineered with privacy as a primary goal. Ghostery use is anonymous. No registrations or sign-ups are required. The Ghostery plug-in does not place session cookies into your browser. Neither the Ghostery application nor Evidon receives any data from Ghostery users unless the user opts-in to participate in GhostRank. GhostRank data is anonymous, it is NEVER used for advertising targeting purposes, and is only shared in an aggregated, non-personal, statistical form.

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