dcancel

Ryan,

Not interested in a flamewar but happy to follow-up and clarify.

1. I'm not a journalist.

2. The fact that Media6 Degrees, a behavorial targeter is on their site is binary. Look at the source, it's there, pretty simple.

3. See #2 for the truth.

4. Depends on your world view. For people who don't want to be targeted by behavioral ad networks this is nefarious. For those who don't care it isn't.

5. I couldn't care less about "getting publicity" for my product. It's free and I don't need the publicity.

See below for my full comments but in short this is not an ad for my "free" product. I've updated my post to link to other ad blockers to make this crystal clear.

Huh? I should ask every site on the internet that is tracking your behavioral information why they're doing it?

I think we the users should decide what info gets shared with who. I also think we have the right as their user to publicly call them on questionable practices.

I'm a fan of their products too, just not a fanboy, there's a difference.

See above for my full comments but in short the difference here is that Media6 Degrees collects your behavioral data ties it with your social graph (your friends) data packages it up and resells it to other ad networks to target you.

This is the author of Ghostery. Sorry if it came off that way that is not my intent. I am not pitching my "free" product.

The difference here is that Media6 Degrees collects your behavioral data ties it with your social graph (your friends) data packages it up and resells it to other ad networks to target you.

Google Analytics data doesn't get sold to 3rd parties nor is it used by AdWords/AdSense to target ads at you (at least that is Google's claim).

Sorry if this came off as an ad, its not.

A user's perspective: http://yardley.ca/2009/05/04/when-blockers-block-the-blocker...

"Finally, NoScript is still blocking Ghostery through a Ghostery-specific CSS rule. This is especially vile, since Ghostery doesn’t affect NoScript’s revenue model in the slightest - it’s just the tool I use to be informed about the analytics and advertising technologies in use from site to site. The site owners’ claim that he doesn’t like the look of the CSS overlay is completely unacceptable - my browser, my computer, my ability to view the content in the manner of my choosing."

Thanks for mentioning Ghostery, http://www.ghostery.com/.

Good list and keep up the good work at Mozilla.

DC

What is TechCrunch is smoking?

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/twitter.com+digg.com/?metri...

Love it!

I like that it's not a full blown MVC framework. Going to give it a try.

Thanks! David

Just installed this addon. Looks very cool. Thanks for sharing.

David

Good idea. Thanks for checking it out.

David

I created Ghostery so I could see what trackers, analytics and widgets sites I visit use. Very different use case than the misnomer "spyware cookies".

Spyware cookies are something invented by Spyware software vendors to sell more software.

"Spyware cookies" miss the issue IMHO. It is the responsibility of the sites you visit to remain transparent; focusing on "cookies" incorrectly makes it a 3rd party service issue, i.e. tell me who allowed the cookie to be set in the first place not just that it exists.

Thanks for the comment, enjoy your blog.

Not looking to reinvent the wheel. Old dinosaurs like myself will remember that the term "web bugs" was in use long before "spyware" and "adware" became popular terms.

A bookmarklet version is on its way which will work on any browser, including Safari.

Your totally right. If your worried about web bugs you can and probably already run tools like you mentioned.

Ghostery is for those of us, like me, who just want to know what ad networks, widgets and other web bugs the sites I visit are using.

Cheers, David

Actually not trying to spread FUD at all. I'm the founder of one of the companies detected, Lookery.com, before that Compete.com, which relied on 3rd party clickstream sources.

It's not the data that is sent that is a reason for concern but the "cookies" attached to that data especially when unified across sites.

Anyway the reason to use the tool is to alert you to what the page your on might be doing. I.e. Visit any popular newspaper site and you'll that beyond web analytics trackers and ad networks your data is being sent to behavioral tracking companies like Tacoda and Revenue Science.

Thanks for the comment, ;dc

Your right I'm waiting for them to review the site. I meant to link to our softpedia "clean" page, http://www.softpedia.com/progClean/Ghostery-Clean-115003.htm...

But your right, being an extension you can just peruse the source yourself.

I like your description better than mine, I'll change it to something a little easier to understand. Thanks!

Thanks for the comments. I'll incorporate everyone's feedback in the next version.

I plan on adding the ability to click on any of the web bugs and find out more about that bug. The pages that you land on will be on a wiki so they'll be open to additions.

DNSMadeEasy for all my personal domains and Neustar for our work/production domains.

Love DNSMadeEasy been using them for a while now, no problems beyond a confusing interface although Neustar's is much worse (interface).

I've moved to Django, huge performance difference. Also a simpler stack, apache + mod_python vs the nginx + mongrel or apache/lighttpd + fcgi or etc....