[ale] hire a ghost to protect your privacy for free

[Ron Frazier]

I just learned about a neat browser plugin that monitors and blocks web 
sites, web bugs, and cookies which track and invade your privacy.  It 
has a database of over 500 items and growing.  It's called Ghostery, and 
I've installed it on all my browsers.  I also run noscript all the time, 
and only trust and allow scripts on the sites I trust.  Speaking of 
which, I should go cull that white list.  However, some for some sites, 
like Best Buy, I have to allow scripting for the site to work properly.  
This way, I can still reduce the amount of tracking they do on me to a 
minimum.  It optionally pops up a message when you visit a site and 
tells you how many tracking things it found / blocked.  It's quite an 
eye opener.  Some sites have MANY trackers built into them, all of which 
feed into massive online databases about your activities and habits.

Check out http://www.ghostery.com/ .

The plugin can be added from the Firefox add-ons menu.  It's available 
for Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.  I don't know how to 
install the ones other than Firefox.

The options settings I use from the initial setup screen are as 
follows.  (More options are available from the toolbar icon.)

    - GhostRank - ON - Anonymously collects data about the web objects 
the plugin finds.  Helps grow the tracker bad guy database.
    - Show alert bubble - ON - Displays a small popup for a few seconds 
on each web page which shows which trackers were found and optionally 
blocked.
    - Enable ghost count - ON - Shows how many trackers were found and 
optionally blocked
    - Delete Flash and Silverlight cookies on exit - OFF - (Advanced 
options screen)  This was the default in my installation.  I have Better 
Privacy installed to deal with Flash cookies.  I don't know about 
Silverlight cookies.  Some Flash cookies (like Pandora), I allow to stay 
there.
    - Enable bug list auto update - ON
    - Block Web Bugs - ON - All items in database selected to be blocked.
    - Block (tracking) Cookies - ON - All items in database selected to 
be blocked.  (I have my Firefox settings to accept 1st party cookies, 
reject 3rd party cookies, and clear them when exiting.  This is better, 
since it reduces tracking between times you shut the browser down, which 
may be days or weeks for me.)

Steve Gibson did a neat Security Now podcast about this topic, at the 
link below.

http://www.twit.tv/sn305

Thought you guys might find this interesting.

Sincerely,

Ron

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier

770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT c3energy.com