About Ghostery

AskingAvA · Dec 3, 2017

I downloaded it for the first time and it shows up saying it has 8 trackers. What is it? What does it mean? it says to pause blocking or whitelist site. What do I do? Will it slow down or harm my computer? What are you supposed to with the trackers and what do they mean. Thank you.

MacInWin · Dec 3, 2017

Ghostery detects things on websites that track you through the internet and report back to whomever installed it on the site where you came from and what you did and where you went. Sometimes that's ok, sometimes it is not.

Personally, I have Ghostery on and block EVERYTHING. Sometimes I see just a few trackers, beacons, counters, etc, and sometimes I see dozens of them.

I have very little whitelisted. Just a few sites I trust explicitly not to put up the stuff others do.

I occasionally have to pause blocking to get a stream to run because one of the things blocked is part of the stream. Generally, once the stream is started, I can put blocking back on and the stream will continue. It varies.

Will Ghostery slow down your computer? Most likely not, but the trackers and beacons and counters will definitely slow things down as they all report back to their mothership. So running Ghostery should make most of your browsing crisper (with the one streaming exception I mentioned earlier).

Ghostery will not harm your computer, but some of the more malevolent malware can cause some issues if it hijacks your browser and prevents you from leaving the hijacked page. Ghostery will block the hijack in most cases, so it prevents the harm.

Bottom line, Ghostery is one of the "good guys" in this case.

AskingAvA · Dec 3, 2017

Also, if you have AdBlock Ultimate, do you need Ghostery? I've never had a iMac or apple computer so this is all so unfamiliar to me. thank you.

ferrarr · Dec 3, 2017

Ghostery is telling you that the web page you are currently viewing, has 8 items on the page that are tracking you and your browsing habit. If it is a web site that you trust, you can pause blocking, or whitelist this site. The pause, will work for this visit, or maybe until you close the tab, or browser. The whitelist, will add this web site to a list of sites you consider safe and trustworthy.

AskingAvA · Dec 3, 2017

MacInWin said:
Ghostery detects things on websites that track you through the internet and report back to whomever installed it on the site where you came from and what you did and where you went. Sometimes that's ok, sometimes it is not.

Personally, I have Ghostery on and block EVERYTHING. Sometimes I see just a few trackers, beacons, counters, etc, and sometimes I see dozens of them.

I have very little whitelisted. Just a few sites I trust explicitly not to put up the stuff others do.

I occasionally have to pause blocking to get a stream to run because one of the things blocked is part of the stream. Generally, once the stream is started, I can put blocking back on and the stream will continue. It varies.

Will Ghostery slow down your computer? Most likely not, but the trackers and beacons and counters will definitely slow things down as they all report back to their mothership. So running Ghostery should make most of your browsing crisper (with the one streaming exception I mentioned earlier).

Ghostery will not harm your computer, but some of the more malevolent malware can cause some issues if it hijacks your browser and prevents you from leaving the hijacked page. Ghostery will block the hijack in most cases, so it prevents the harm.

Bottom line, Ghostery is one of the "good guys" in this case.

Hi MacInWin, when you say you block everything, does that mean that you don't pause or whitelist anything? And just let the site run itself and not interfere with it? And you mention that Ghostery detects websites that track you. I assume there is not a person behind this, that is tracking you?
Also when you say , " the trackers and beacons and counters will definitely slow things down as they all report back to their mothership. So running Ghostery should make most of your browsing crisper (with the one streaming exception I mentioned earlier). " When you are refering to trackers and beacons and counters slowing things down, how is that avoided? Is it avoided by having Ghostery? By not having Ghostery, is what you are saying that will happen (when I quoted you?
When you mention malevolent malware causing trouble, Sometimes, and this has happened several times, my safari page would freeze, without loading any page, and the window will be completely white and I wouldn't be able to close it, or make it load or anything. I would have to "quite safari" on the top left. Is that what you are talking about?

badshoehabit · Dec 3, 2017

Adblock blocks ads and pop ups. When go to any website Ghostery identifies other websites which can 'see' what you're doing. Ever thought it strange that you looked at TVs (or whatever) online and then on, say, facebook you get a 'you might like to see' link? That's what Ghostery blocks.

A must for me on facebook is FB Purity which allows you to tailor in detail what you get on your timeline (nowt!)

MacInWin · Dec 4, 2017

AskingAvA, I block EVERYTHING by default, as I said. If a site I trust needs it paused to show me something, I'll pause it on that one site, but then turn it on again before I go away from that site. There is a person behind the tracking, the one who wants to sell you something, or sell your internet history to somebody to sell you something. Yes, Ghostery blocks the trackers/beacons/counters from executing at all. Your white screen in surfing is generally a stall on your DNS service. The website you went to referred to another website and the DNS server has to gather up that address as well to load that content. Ghostery can help a bit here because it blocks that referral, so the DNS stall will be less obvious. But the stall happens whenever there is a slow internet connection or your DNS service is slow.

mrplow · Dec 4, 2017

AskingAvA said:
I downloaded it for the first time and it shows up saying it has 8 trackers. What is it? What does it mean? it says to pause blocking or whitelist site. What do I do? Will it slow down or harm my computer? What are you supposed to with the trackers and what do they mean. Thank you.

As others have said Ghostery is a trusted and capable product.

Just wanted to highlight something that you might want to consider for the future.

You are asking about a piece of software after you've installed it. The questions you've asked are all reasonable and valid. However, for the future I'd strongly recommend asking those questions before installing any software.

toMACsh · Dec 4, 2017

But some questions will only occur to you when you see what you've got. ;D

mrplow · Dec 4, 2017

toMACsh said:
But some questions will only occur to you when you see what you've got. ;D

No doubt. But will it harm my computer should surely be a pre-installation question?

MacInWin · Dec 4, 2017

AskingAvA, you sent me these two PMs:

how do I delete the trackers? So far I've blocked all of them, but they still show up when I press the ghost icon. Also, on the icon, there is the number of trackers. How do I get rid of all that? Also, I downloaded Adblock and it says it blocked hundreds of ads which is weird because before I installed Adblock I never had ads especially to that high number.

You mentioned you block everything by default, is there a way to permanently block everything, how do you block everything, without doing so manually each time. thank you. Also, how do you get rid of the number listed on the ghost icon, that is, the number of trackers. thank you.

It's generally better to ask questions in the forum where other folks can see the answers to help them, too.

So, for your questions:

You don't delete the trackers, they are on the website you visit. You can only block them from action, which is what Ghostery does. They will continue to appear as long as the sites use them, which they will.

The number of items blocked or detected is there for your understanding of what Ghostery is doing, or, if you have it paused, not doing. You also don't get rid of that, it's how Ghostery works.

I can't talk too much to Adblock as I don't use it, but you would be surprised how many ads are imbedded in the average website.

You cannot permanently block things, each time you go to the website, it has to be blocked at that time. If you configure Ghostery to block everything, it will do so for every site you visit automatically. Click on the Ghostery icon, then the little gear icon and then Options. You can configure Ghostery to block some or all, your choice.

ferrarr · Dec 4, 2017

I recommend, you take some time and read up about Ghostery, https://www.ghostery.com/. There is an option to turn off the bubble, that pops up informing you of the trackers that Ghostery is blocking.

MacInWin · Dec 5, 2017

There is an option to turn off the bubble, that pops up informing you of the trackers that Ghostery is blocking.

Bob, I did not know that. The number doesn't bother me, never has, so I never went looking for how to turn it off.

AskingAvA · Dec 5, 2017

Hello everybody. Its great to see how helpful all of you are. I wasn't expecting you guys to be so helpful. So, I followed MacInWin's advice and made an attempt at blocking all trackers, pressed some buttons. Now it says the following, "Blocking all trackers.

When you block a tracker, that tracker is prevented from communicating with its third-party provider." So I guess I just blocked all trackers. Btw, I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing. thank you.