Ghostery Research Graphs

January 23, 2012 9:44 AM

Ghostery Research has compiled data on internet trackers from users who opted into GhostRank and allowed Ghostery to send information in.
Here are a couple of interesting graphs:
Presidential Candidates websites
Which trackers cause the most lag (load time).
They also have a new site which lists trackers and their ilk in the form of a periodic table . (They explain a little about it here).
posted by marienbad (25 comments total)

something something google ron paul?
posted by marienbad at 9:45 AM on January 23, 2012

This post is no actually about ghosts; I'm still not sure what it is about, but I've figured that much out.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:46 AM on January 23, 2012

I've been using Ghostery for a while and it's pretty neat. I've definitely gone to a few sites and been like "whoa, why do you need so many trackers for this page?"
posted by DU at 9:53 AM on January 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

And looking at the element list, I see I haven't been missing anything (but I knew that, since my web experience basically didn't change with the plugin).

Thanks, ghostery!
posted by DU at 9:55 AM on January 23, 2012

Now if only the Ghostery add-on for Chromium would work as effectively as the one for Firefox.
posted by a small part of the world at 9:57 AM on January 23, 2012

Ghostery is a plug-in available for many web browsers that attempts to detect, track, and optionally block web bugs. Combined with cookies, web bugs make it possible for a third party (like Facebook) to track a lot of an individual's web activity, even if that individual doesn't have (for example) a Facebook account and/or is not logged in to facebook.

I'm no expert on everything that can be done with web bugs. I started using Ghostery because I hoped that blocking useless-to-me page elements would speed up page loads. On most sites, it makes little difference either way, but on other sites it offers a very big speedup.

Blanket blocking also breaks some sites and services, so it's fiddly. Not for everyone.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:58 AM on January 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

For once in my life I'd like to see a Periodic Table of _______ where the rows and columns are meaningful in some way.
posted by theodolite at 9:59 AM on January 23, 2012 [8 favorites]

For the most part I don't think that blanket blocking breaks anything -- but then again I consider the pages I navigate to "fixed" rather than "broken" if they aren't littered with various social media buttons.
posted by a small part of the world at 10:00 AM on January 23, 2012 [4 favorites]

I donno if Ghostery makes Safari more stable or less, well Safari is a pretty unstable browser after all, but ..   I ♥ Ghostery

JavaScript Blacklist, ClickToFlash, and AdBlock+ are essential too.

In fact, I'd imagine that Apple and Adobe doesn't debug Safari's Flash integration much anymore, given that Safari doesn't include Flash by default. And this suggests Safari's incredibly poor stability might be half Flash related. I should probably try never permitting flash content in Safari, leaving Flash sites to another browser.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:05 AM on January 23, 2012

Blanket blocking also breaks some sites and services, so it's fiddly. Not for everyone.

It's pretty easy to allow particular sites. Disqus, say.
posted by DU at 10:12 AM on January 23, 2012

For the most part I don't think that blanket blocking breaks anything

Broke Typepad on FF on Gentoo for me.
posted by kenko at 10:33 AM on January 23, 2012

I really like Ghostery. I really have no idea if it's actually doing anything but the idea that I'm blocking stuff named like, "Quigo Adsonor" and "Optimizely" makes me feel like I'm sticking it to the man.
posted by ghharr at 10:45 AM on January 23, 2012 [8 favorites]

I've definitely gone to a few sites and been like "whoa, why do you need so many trackers for this page?"

It may be my old-timer's memory playing a trick on me, but I think the number of trackers on MeFi has gone down since I installed this add-on. I thought I remembered there being like 5 or 6 here and now there's only two.
posted by DU at 10:50 AM on January 23, 2012

Can anyone say how this compares to NoScript?
posted by benito.strauss at 11:07 AM on January 23, 2012

benito.strauss: It specifically blocks the code from various services that can track you, instead of blocking all Javascript by default. If you have NoScript you shouldn't need Ghostery, but if you're like me and like having Javascript on, Ghostery is good.
posted by zsazsa at 11:26 AM on January 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

Interesting: the KnowYourElements.com page from Ghostery introduces a variety of tracker not blocked by Ghostery but revealed by an examination of the page source:

[Icon] http://cdn.betteradvertising.com/ghostery/site/ghostery.ico
posted by fredludd at 11:43 AM on January 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah Ghostery is great. I love knowing how many trackers a page has. (This page, 2: ChartBeat and Google Analytics). I gave up on the bug blocking though, it broke too many things.

I've always thought NoScript was for crazy paranoids. Back in 2002 blocking Javascript might have seemed clever, but 90% of the web today uses good Javascript to work better. If you're a serious NoScript user how much time do you spend maintaining the whitelist?
posted by Nelson at 11:45 AM on January 23, 2012

I can't imagine managing the whitelist takes that much time. Don't most people visit a pretty stable set of sites?
posted by DU at 11:47 AM on January 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

Possibly dumb question: is there any point in running this on my own web sites, to make sure no one has snuck in anything? I know I haven't.
posted by msalt at 12:28 PM on January 23, 2012

I use NoScript (and probably qualify as crazy paranoid w.r.t. the Internets). There's a little icon on my status bar that lets you easily enable (permanently or temporarily) Javascript for each page. That said, I'm still pretty much living the Web 1.0 life. And I do have Chrome installed, for those sites that won't come up no matter what. (TalkingPointsMemo's graphs, for instance.)
posted by benito.strauss at 1:28 PM on January 23, 2012

If you're a serious NoScript user how much time do you spend maintaining the whitelist?

I have NoScript perpetually turned on. It's not particularly burdensome. For whatever reason, I have Ghostery installed as well and that's more bothersome because it's rare-er that I have to fiddle with Ghostery to get something to load (watching video on CBS's website stands out--Ghostery blocked about a thousand things and one of them was necessary). It's pretty easy to see what to unblock with NoScript.

Actually, I appreciate the fact that NoScript makes you click through the see a PDF in the browser. I only recently installed the plug-in to actually open PDFs in Firefox and haven't learned to download things I know will be massive and they do tend to gum up the works a bit, so I like the prompting that results.
posted by hoyland at 1:38 PM on January 23, 2012

Possibly dumb question: is there any point in running this on my own web sites, to make sure no one has snuck in anything? I know I haven't.


I found a couple of web bugs in a WP theme I had modded for my blog.
posted by fake at 6:00 PM on January 23, 2012

I also like RequestPolicy.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:04 PM on January 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

It may be my old-timer's memory playing a trick on me, but I think the number of trackers on MeFi has gone down since I installed this add-on. I thought I remembered there being like 5 or 6 here and now there's only two.

Noscript is showing 7 for me even after allowing enough for me to post, and ghostery is showing two.

I'd dearly like to shoot all pb's friggin ponies..
posted by Ahab at 8:16 PM on January 23, 2012

SafariCookieCutter lets you edit Safari's cookies. Apple created this wonky NSHTTPCookie API messing up everyones cookie cleaning scripts.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:18 PM on January 23, 2012