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The company that owns Ghostery, Ghostery, Inc. (previously Evidon), plays a dual role in the online advertising industry. Ghostery blocks marketing companies from gathering website user information, but it makes money from selling page visit, blocking and advertising statistics to corporations globally, including corporations that are actively engaged in collecting user information to target ads and other marketing messages to consumers. Customers include advertising industry groups like Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Direct Marketing Association, parts of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA).[9] These agencies then use those reports to monitor how Online Behavioral Advertisers operate and, when needed, refer them to the Federal Trade Commission.[10] Ghostery also offers data to university students, researchers and journalists to support their work. According to some journalists, Ghostery is not transparent in how it collects data from users or what that data is used for. Other journalists have claimed that Ghostery sells user data to advertisers to better target their ads.[11] Ghostery, Inc denies this, asserting that Ghostery does not collect any information that could be used to identify users or target ads specifically at individual users. To support their assertion, the company made the source code open for review in 2010, but after 2010 further source have not been released.[12] In February 22, 2016 Ghostery, Inc released new EULA for Ghostery browser extension, as proprietary closed-source product.[1] Very shady indeed. Looking for alternatives now... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Business_model |
Depending on settings, it'll break some sites that rely on e.g. Facebook login by default. I'm OK with this and trust EFF.