Even older dogs and cats can benefit from Ghostery!

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As the world watches one social media org continues to tank in relation to the stock market, it is the challenge of monetizing a site that poses one of the greatest challenges for many online outfits, especially with free-based online consumers such as myself. I have purchased little in direct relation to the online community while remaining periodically active in a variety of settings, including blogging and social media outlets.

Therefore, while remaining appreciative of the need for anyone to actually fund an online activity, I still have always felt it important to have a more active role in determining who is going to be sifting through my digitalized behaviors whether its playing a game or publishing my own content. Blind faith may has its place and role within our human-driven digital constructs, but most don't need to go flopping around a phishing site or a fraudulent banking site either, let alone a child simply playing a video game in an online setting being an attractive demographics to get a grip on.

So although I still remain a fan of NoScript, I recently reinstalled my Firefox and decided it was time to go "shopping" with the add-ons. I am by no means a power user, but once or twice a year I will spend and hour or two combing though the add-on catalog to see what's up. Found Ghostery and decided to give it a surface twirl.

For the most part, it didn't interfere with my gaming habits or posting activities, but then again I really didn't think much of its presence either (old dogs can learn new tricks, time is the tricky part). The few times I decided to glance at the ghost in the corner and click on the menu satisfied my curiosity needs overall, usually to see what could still be blocking my gaming experience.

However, one of the key features I believe Ghostery has to offer is the richness of research ability once a tracker has been recognized as "present and accounted for." Today might have been the first time I had the chance to really review some of the trackers by reading a clump of analysis pages attached to a variety of sites I've used in the past, but my choice to place initial faith in Ghostery being a value add-on for my own personal online needs seems well-placed.

I don't have the time to visit every single vendor site of every single signal collector. In fact, most people don't (unless its their job, of course). I basically need simple summary data that can give me reason to trust the source collecting the data. As current and relevant example, this particular election cycle is naming names of data collection and analysis sources. As I cited above, I believe it's important for an end-user to have some yes/no influence over individual line-items and if I don't want my personal data to travel to a political campaign with such directness of scope and depth of data, I have the choice to allow Ghostery to do its thing and block the tracker, or I can simply stay away from the site.

Certainly my own faith relies on the database Ghostery draws from, but I believe its current index is robust enough to certainly help many consumers learn more about what companies are collecting what data in a quick, easy and simple manner and if I ever get the urge to look deeper, a variety of links provided by Ghostery are just waiting to be further explored.

Really nice add-on for the entire online community!