How does Ghostery stack up to “Do Not Track” and “Adblock?”

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These are great questions.

Let's start with the "Apples and Oranges" part. The various approaches start out with different purposes, core principles, etc.

Ghostery focuses on education and consumer choice (i.e. making informed decisions). It doesn't tell you what to do; it gives you the tools to effectively take personal responsibility. Ghostery strives to provide encyclopedic knowledge about every tracking element: who's behind it, what information do they collect, how long do they retain it, do they subscribe to any sort of code of ethics, is there any oversight, etc. It's also a poster child for the power of crowdsourcing; everything that's in the database is there because someone suggested it — this biases toward actual (rather than imagined) usage. The optional Ghostrank is the ultimate cooperative venture: by comparing page load times between users who've made slightly different blocking choices, Ghostery, Inc. can estimate the performance impact each tracker imposes. The more people who participate, the more refined and accurate those estimates can become. For Ghostery, a "bad" tracker is one that leads to a negative user experience — even if it doesn't affect the visual appearance of a page. Ghostery's blocking is pretty thorough; when you shut down a third-party element, it's almost like it was never there to begin with. While ad blocking is not a primary goal, it's often a desirable consequence of privacy protection.

Ad blockers focus on visual annoyances. How they achieve results varies; sometimes they operate by cutting off ads at the source (like Ghostery), other times they allow the behind-the-scenes mechanisms to prepare an ad for display, but step in at the last moment to prevent it from being shown on-screen. Many of these products cater to the "exterminator" mentality — "I don't care what this is, I just want it dead." An extreme implementation is Bluhell Firewall, which takes Adblock Plus' EasyList, and goes on a "Hulk smash!" rampage. There's nothing to think about, no choices to make. You completely surrender all control, and allow someone else to make the big decisions for you. There's no feedback mechanism, either; users have no say in its future, and there's no way to tell how well it actually works. While privacy protection is not a primary goal, it's often a desirable consequence of ad blocking.

There some interesting observations you can make after looking at Are We Private Yet? First, doing something is "better" than doing nothing. That's not particularly surprising. What some people might not expect is how much no-cost products outperform paid ones. Ghostery has something of a "Robin Hood" character; its revenue gets plucked from wealthy, self-centered interests. This is in stark contrast to pretenders like Disconnect, which soaks the least affluent (to benefit those who aren't hurting in the least). Adblock Plus (which works very well) is funded by larger advertisers who are whitelisted under their Acceptable Ads initiative. Ghostery makes money by doing research and publishing reports. Purchasers, some of whom are in the advertising industry, receive no preferential treatment. Several people have asked whether companies like Google or Facebook have paid Ghostery to allow their trackers to escape detection (and, consequently, blocking); the answer to that is no, never.

Ghostery originated in the U.S.A., and started out as an English-only product. While it's now multilingual, years of anglophone (and francophone) influence left us with much more comprehensive coverage in North America and Europe than on other continents. That's one of the downsides of the crowdsourcing model. We're also behind where we should be in regard to certain vertical markets, ranging from the automotive sector to pornography. Those are our elephants in the room.

Ghostery isn't anti-advertising. Nor is it so much anti-tracking as anti-ignorance. We feel it's important for people to know where they stand. Otherwise, it's really hard to have any sort of meaningful conversation. The general public tends to be in the dark about a lot of the issues we face. There's no shortage of chatter about Google and Facebook and the NSA ... while the most serious threats lurk in the shadows, coming from places you've probably never heard of (and they like it that way). I have no sympathy for broken business models; not only do I believe they have no right to survive, I consider expediting their demise a public service. There are plenty of ways to make money without being abusive.

How much privacy is enough? That changes over time. And it's not a new concern.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tran...