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Jan
19th
Tue
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To the Ghostery Community,

Since starting Ghostery last year my goal has been to provide my fellow consumers with a free service built on the principles of transparency and consumer control. I am proud of the overwhelming response to Ghostery; over the past year, over 2 million people have installed Ghostery and joined our community.

Over the past months, as my focus switched to my new company, Performable, I made the decision that Ghostery should be in the hands of those who can give it the resources it needs to grow. I am happy to announce the sale of Ghostery to Better Advertising. Better Advertising is a company started by a team of privacy and online advertising veterans whose goal is to bring trust and transparency to the online advertising industry by working with companies, industry associations and the FTC to bring the best privacy and transparency to consumers.

Preserving Ghostery’s principles of user control and data collection transparency were paramount for me in making this decision. That is why, of all the options for Ghostery, including various offers for acquisition, a sale to Better Advertising was clearly the right choice. It gives me great peace of mind to know that I am leaving Ghostery in the right hands. They will not use any data collected from Ghostery for any type of advertising, a promise they make explicit in their Mission Statement and Privacy Center.

I have prepared a short Q&A to answer some questions that might come up in the near future:

  1. Will the Ghostery service be interrupted?
    • No. While we’re transitioning over to Better Advertising’s infrastructure, we will do everything possible to make sure it is seamless.
  2. Do I have to do anything or make any changes?
    • No. In the short term nothing is changing that would require you to do anything on your end.
  3. Will my data be collected and used for advertising?
    • No. Better Advertising’s services are built from the ground up to specifically avoid collecting any type of data that could be used for behavioral advertising. Better Advertising also publicly pledges never to use any data it collects for advertising
  4. What will Better Advertising do with Ghostery?
    • Better Advertising is committed to growing the Ghostery community by extending Ghostery across more Internet browser versions, and providing new services and features to our community.
  5. Will the service remain free?
    • Yes. We don’t see making any changes to the service for the foreseeable future.

The Better Advertising team and I will be communicating more information in the coming weeks  and months. I will personally stay involved with Ghostery as I will remain an advisor to the Better Advertising team going forward. If you have any immediate comments or questions please send them to support [at] ghostery [dot] com.

Thank you all for your support. This has been an incredible experience!

Note: This was crossposted on my personal blog earlier today.


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Dec
7th
Mon
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Ghostery 2.0.2 Released

Ghostery 2.0.2 New Message Box

Quick update: I uploaded version 2.0.2 to the Firefox site today. It’s currently in the sandbox awaiting review by the Mozilla editors.

If you would like to download it now, go here and select Version 2.0.2.

Here’s what’s new in v2.0.2:

  • Added support for Firefox 3.6
  • Added strikethroughs to make it more intuitive as to what’s being blocked. (See image on the right)
  • New definitions for WordStream, KissMetrics, MixPanel, Adtegrity, Unica, eBay Stats, TouchCommerce, ClixMetrix, ion Interactive’s LiveBall, Marin Search Marketer, Pardot, VisiStat and Sales Genius.
  • Change wording of “Advanced Options” to “Sharing Options”.
  • Bug fix: Fixed definition for NedStat.
  • Bug fix: Fix Spanish translation for the word “Allow”

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Sep
29th
Tue
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Is 37 Signals Selling Behavioral Targeting Data?

37 Signals selling data to Media6 Degrees?

I was surfing around the 37 Signals site today when I noticed something odd. It looks like 37 Signals is selling access to its audience behavioral data to Media6°.

According to Media6°website they do the following:

Our patent pending algorithms and methods connect a brand’s existing customers with user segments composed entirely of consumers who are interwoven via the social graph. These bespoke Media6° segments are both completely customized for each advertiser and enormously scalable. They reflect high degrees of homophily, the tendency of like-minded individuals to cluster with other people who strongly resemble them.

These Media6° audiences, sharing powerful demographic and psychographic traits, have been proven to respond to advertising messages at rates dramatically higher than other targeting alternatives.

I can’t figure out why 37 Signals would be selling this information to ad networks. Please let me know if you do.

For now you can protect your privacy using NoScript, AdBlock Plus or  Ghostery.


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Aug
31st
Mon
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I love our Ghostery Fans

I ♥ our Ghostery fans!

We’ve had a few fans create some cool Ghostery stuff, and I love all of it, but this week @pok3 took it to the next level.

He created some awesome skins to make Ghostery for Firefox prettier.

Checkout this cool status icon:

Before

After

and this awesome restyling of our alert bubble:

Before

After

Thanks @pok3!


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Aug
5th
Wed
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Ghostery 2.0.1 Released

Quick update: I uploaded version 2.0.1 to the Firefox site last week. It’s currently in the sandbox awaiting review by the Mozilla editors before it’s released.

If you’d like to upgrade now you can download it here.

Here’s what’s new in v2.0.1:

  • Count of blocked trackers is now displayed in the status bar if blocking is enabled.

    Blocking Counts Displayed

  • Options screen is now split into 2 tabs. This fixes a bug where some of our users couldn’t save their changes because the dialog box was too big for their screen size.

  • Added definitions for: WidgetBox, Clearspring, Navegg and Google Website Optimizer.
  • Bug fix: Russian translation now working.
  • Bug fix: Fix for CSS issue that was causing Ghostery to interfere with the Bookmarks “folder selection” dialog and some other plugins.

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Jul
22nd
Wed
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Announcing: Ghostery for Firefox v2.0 featuring TrackerBlock

I’m pleased to announce the release of Ghostery for Firefox v2.0!

You can get the latest version here, or if you already have Ghostery installed, simply wait for Firefox to automatically notify you of the update.

NEW: Ghostery TrackerBlock - Block advertising, widgets, and other trackers

You’ve all been asking for the ability to block trackers for a long time. I am very happy to annonce that “TrackerBlock” is finally a part of Ghostery.

Ghostery - Blocked Trackers message

The release of TrackerBlock is the first step to providing you with a comprehensive set of tools to protect your privacy and to manage your relationships with 3rd party advertising, behavioral targeters and web analytic services.

Here are few screenshots that show TrackerBlock in action:

Other new stuff in Ghostery for Firefox v2.0:

  • Support for Russian language added.
  • New definitions:
    • Statsit
    • LeadForce1 
    • BackType Widgets
    • iPerceptions
    • SearchForce
    • Tweetboard
    • TweetMeme
    • Zendesk
    • INFOnline
    • RichRelevance
    • LiveInternet
    • visitrac
    • BLVD Status
    • Clixpy
    • Logdy
    • DoubleVerify
    • ViziSense
    • phpMyVisites
    • Xiti
    • Yandex.Metrics
    • AdRiver
    • SpyLog
    • RapLeaf
    • ClickFuel
    • Alexa Metrics
  • Refined definitions:
    • Microsoft Atlas
    • Tacoda
    • Tell-A-Friend

Finally I want to thank Jon Pierce for contributing the blocking code and Sergey Fomin for contributing the Russian translation.

p.s. If you use Ghostery, please consider posting a review here. Thanks for your support and feedback, it means a lot to me!


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Jul
3rd
Fri
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Top 10 Web Analytics Trackers on the Web

This is number three in a series of posts this week on the Top Web Bug Trackers we saw at Ghostery during June.

Noteable:

  1. Full blown domination: Google Analytics, Google’s data collection machine, accounts for 80% of the distribution among the Top 10.
  2. Three sleepers on the list: StatCounter, Woopra and Crazy Egg.
  3. Quantcast is 4x larger than it’s larger, better funded competitor NetRatings SiteCensus.
  4. Crazy Egg, brought to you by the masterminds behind Kissmetrics, has more paid customers than WebTrends a pioneer in the Web Analytics world that was founded in 1993.

Top 10 Web Analytics Trackers found by Ghostery - June 2009
Embed:

Rank Tracker
1 Google Analytics
2 StatCounter
3 Quantcast
4 Omniture
5 Wordpress Stats
6 SiteMeter
7 NetRatings SiteCensus
8 Woopra
9 Crazy Egg
10 WebTrends
Web Analytics Analysis by Ghostery - June 2009


Please let me know how can we make these reports better.


Methodology: This data was compiled via the GhostRank submissions of our users. Thanks to all of you who have opt-ed into sharing the bugs you find with the community none of this could be possible without your contributions.

GhostRank is an opt-in feature included in Ghostery that allows users to submit the bugs they find across the web.

Today we measure the existence of web bugs on a per-domain basis (E.g. google.com, wordpress.com, etc). What this means is that sites like “tumblr.com” and “blogspot.com” would only count as one site when in reality there are 1000s of sites hosted on those platforms under subdomains, i.e. “ghostery.tumblr.com”.

Future versions of our tracker reports will be based on subdomains in order to more accurately measure “website” distribution.


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Jul
2nd
Thu
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Top 10 Widgets on the Web

This is the second in a series of posts coming this week on the Top Web Bug Trackers we saw at Ghostery last month.

Noteable:

  1. It’s all about Sharing. 4 of the top 10 widgets (AddThis, DiggThis, ShareThis and AddToAny) are focused on letting users rate or recommend content.
  2. Wow, AddThis is twice as large as its next 3 competitors combined.
  3. Portable Social Networks: Facebook and MySpace were missing in action. Twitter Badge, MyBlogLog and Google FriendConnect own the category.
  4. Search is still it. The Google Custom Search widget is 4x the size of either Google Widgets and Google FriendConnect.

Top 10 Widgets found by Ghostery - June 2009
Embed:

Rank Tracker
1 AddThis
2 Google Custom Search
3 Twitter Badge
4 MyBlogLog
5 DiggThis
6 ShareThis
7 Google Widgets
8 Alexa Traffic Rank
9 Google FriendConnect
10 AddtoAny
Widget Analysis by Ghostery - June 2009


Next up is our Top 10 Web Analytic Trackers report. Please let me know how can we make these reports better.


Methodology: This data was compiled via the GhostRank submissions of our users. Thanks to all of you who have opt-ed into sharing the bugs you find with the community none of this could be possible without your contributions.

GhostRank is an opt-in feature included in Ghostery that allows users to submit the bugs they find across the web.

Today we measure the existence of web bugs on a per-domain basis (E.g. google.com, wordpress.com, etc). What this means is that sites like “tumblr.com” and “blogspot.com” would only count as one site when in reality there are 1000s of sites hosted on those platforms under subdomains, i.e. “ghostery.tumblr.com”.

Future versions of our tracker reports will be based on subdomains in order to more accurately measure “website” distribution.


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Jul
1st
Wed
permalink

Top 10 Web Bug Trackers on the Web

This is the first in a series of posts coming this week on the Top Web Bug Trackers we saw at Ghostery last month.

What surprised me:

  1. Google’s utter domination of the Top 10 list (Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Doubleclick and Google Custom Search).
  2. Google Analytics coverage is massive and growing quickly. I instinctively knew this but its breadth and velocity even surprised me.
  3. Two sleepers: Statcounter and AddThis. Their penetration rates eclipsing many well-known services, including some very large ad networks.
  4. Free: 8 of the trackers are “free” or have “free” versions. With only Doubleclick and Omniture being paid “enterprise” services.
  5. Open-source inside: OpenAds and Wordpress Stats are based on, or are, open source projects.

Top 10 Trackers found by Ghostery - June 2009
Embed:

Rank Tracker
1 Google Analytics
2 Google Adsense
3 Doubleclick
4 Statcounter
5 AddThis
6 Google Custom Search
7 Quantcast
8 OpenAds
9 Omniture
10 Wordpress Stats
Analysis by Ghostery - June 2009

Let me know what you think of these reports and how I can make them better.

Thanks!
David


Methodology: This data was compiled via the GhostRank submissions of our users. Thanks to all of you who have opt-ed into sharing the bugs you find with the community none of this could be possible without your contributions.

GhostRank is an opt-in feature included in Ghostery that allows users to submit the bugs they find across the web.

Today we measure the existence of web bugs on a per-domain basis (E.g. google.com, wordpress.com, etc). What this means is that sites like “tumblr.com” and “blogspot.com” would only count as one site when in reality there are 1000s of sites hosted on those platforms under subdomains, i.e. “ghostery.tumblr.com”.

Future versions of our tracker reports will be based on subdomains in order to more accurately measure “website” distribution.


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Jun
9th
Tue
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Ghostery v1.5 is here; announcing the Ghostery Directory!

I just uploaded Ghostery v1.5 to the Mozilla Add-ons site. The Mozilla editors still need to review it in order to approve it, I hope that will happen soon.

You can download the latest version from here, current Ghostery users can just wait for Firefox to automatically notify you of the update.

What’s new in v1.5:

  • We’ve added a new notification system. Now you’ll be able to click on the ghost icon in your statusbar to see which trackers were found on the current page. [see screenshots in slideshow]


  • An entirely new Ghostery website is here. From the new menu you can click on the “What is X?” links to be taken to the new Ghostery Directory where you can learn what this tracker does, who owns it, see how popular it is via GhostRank data, leave comments and rate the tracker. [see screenshots in slideshow]
  • You can now get to Ghostery’s Options screen and other links right from your browser’s Tools-> menu. [see screenshots in slideshow]
  • A common request from our users was to be able to see the source of the trackers we find. Now you can see a cached version of the tracker source. [see screenshots in slideshow]
  • Modified or added definitions for Yahoo Web Analytics, Tynt Tracer, i-stats, Snoobi, Rocket Fuel, ShinyStat, VisiStat, NedStat, Acerno, Mindset Media, GoDaddy Site Analytics’, AdNexus, AlmondNet, Collective Media, eXelate, Fox Audience Network, interCLICK, NextAction, Traffic Marketplace, Turn, Real Media, etracker, Comscore VoiceFive, AddThis and Bizo.
  • [Bug fix] Fixed problem with German and Spanish translations not working properly.

The biggest surprise to me is to see how vibrant the Ghostery community has become so quickly, thank you all. I can’t wait to set the community loose on v1.5 and the new Ghostery Directory!!

P.S. If you use Ghostery, please consider posting a review here. Thanks for your support and feedback, it means a lot to me!

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