How can I add a new tracking code for blocking?

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Ghostery for Firefox lets you supplement its official list of third-party elements with a user-created database. This feature is not currently available for other browsers.

This description pertains to Ghostery 2.7.2 for Firefox.

Ghostery provides a mechanism for testing bug definitions prior to submitting them for publication, or for dealing with site-specific situations that aren't of general interest.

Tip: You may find it helpful to create a secondary Firefox profile if you are testing Ghostery prereleases and/or working with user databases.

• http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/P...
• http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/M...

Open about:support. In the Application Basics section, there should be a row for Profile Directory, with a button labeled Open Containing Folder. Go ahead and click it. The folder that opens up should contain a ghostery folder within it: double-click that. This is where you'll find:

bugs.db — official 3pes definitions: do not edit; overwritten on update
lsos.db — official Cookies definitions: do not edit; overwritten on update
selectedBugs — do not edit; managed by Blocking Options (3pes)
selectedLsos — do not edit; managed by Blocking Options (Cookies)
surrogates.db — Surrogates definitions: do not edit: overwritten on update
user.bugs.db — user-created 3pes definitions

user.bugs.db should contain a JSON array in the same format as the bugs property value in bugs.db. Ghostery is completely intolerant of mistakes in this file: you need to know what you're doing, and be exceedingly meticulous. If you're not sure that describes you, don't monkey with this. The current implementation is intended for advanced users only!

A bug can be matched against a regular expression or a string pattern. Regular expressions are more flexible, while strings offer better performance. Multiple patterns can be used, in which case all rows belonging to a single bug will have the same aid.

cid is a Company identifier; different bugs associated with the same parent (e.g. Facebook) can have identical cids.

id is a unique key to ensure no two rows have identical values.

Evidon maintains the assigned numbers used by the public database.

When authoring a user database, the easy way to stay out of trouble is to assign values greater than 10000:

[{"type":"tracker","aid":"10001","cid":"10001","pattern":"\\.verizon\\.com\\/vztracker\\/vztracker\\.aspx\\?","name":"Verizon tracker","id":"10001","affiliation":""},{"type":"ad","aid":"10002","cid":"10002","pattern":"syndicate\\.verizon\\.com\\/ads\\/","name":"Verizon ad","id":"10002","affiliation":""}]

To avoid confusion, don't duplicate names used by the public database.

When Ghostery finds a user-defined bug, (U) will appear in the purple bubble, and the pop-up menu will start with User-supplied: instead of What is. Under Blocking Options, you'll find your contributions listed under the User Added category.

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While you could redistribute your user.bugs.db, remember that anyone who uses it will replace (not merge with!) their previous version. Is there a reason you don't want your additions to become part of the official database?

Hi yt.nash,

Which browser do you use?

Unfortunately, until a version of Ghostery specifically permits this, you are not allowed to redistribute Ghostery or its tracker definitions. An open-source Ghostery (with appropriate tracker definitions licensing) is in the works.

Hi Eric,

Many thanks for your answer. For Firefox is completely close. I will play with user definition DB only for testing purposes. Really, and under Google Chrome, I tried to modify the original DB without success. My choice was wrong: wrong browser, wrong DB file.

Thanks again!

Hi Alexei,

For surfing, I'm using Google Chrome (more stable than Firefox). For developing, I'm still using Firefox which has the best add-ons for Web developers.

How could I add my tracker definition into the official bugs DB?

Thanks in advance!

Is this a thing that Ghostery is interested in, or is it just an internal/one-off/personal project?

If your definitions are for a tracker used on a number of websites, you should start a new "idea" thread on this forum, with a few links to example pages that have the tracker.