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Video and audio ads are stealing viewer paid GB access to the internet!!!
I pay 50 dollars a month for 4GB of data. Advertising companies are increasingly inserting video and audio ads that play automatically when the page loads. Increasingly, there are no options to stop the ads. This should be illegal. These ads are stealing my monthly GB of access to data. I do NOT want to see or listen to ads that appear on a page. These ads should only activate with VIEWER SELECTED action.
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Hi Viewer,
Thanks for using Ghostery!
Sounds like these issues would be a good possibility for our click 2 play feature. Can you send us some examples of these sites so we can take a look and see what can be done.Comment -
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Hello Ghostery employee:
Ghostery is already supposed to be monitoring advertisers actions. Why should I need to send you some examples. Ghostery should already have them, and is probably already quite aware of the advertising practices that I am referring to. Why keep shifting responsibility onto the individual consumer of internet activities? Ghostery needs to live up to its supposed purpose, rather than just idly cruising and letting advertisers eat all the cake that advertisers wanted, still want, and still get!-
The "problem" isn't a lack of information, it's one of overabundance. The question is, what's important to you, so we can address your issue now? Ghostery is intended to provide information that helps users make informed choices, not to make decisions for them. Its primary audience is responsible adults; other solutions (e.g. Bluhell Firefall) may be better suited for young children.
Sometimes we have to remind people that Ghostery is not an ad blocker, it's a privacy extension. There are some things that should be handled by features your browser already provides (e.g. Firefox's media.autoplay.enabled preference), and there are a few that other extensions already address. I recently posted about reining in Adobe Flash Player.
All of the major browser vendors except Mozilla (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Opera) earn significant revenue from advertisers, so it should come as no surprise that their products are designed to be ad-friendly by default. Mozilla, which thinks of itself as a struggling nonprofit, has threatened to "monetize" their New Tab page. So, yeah, it's up to individuals to either consume what's placed in front of them, or learn to pick and choose what they like. -
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To add to what Eric said. We don't collect information on you as "the user" at all. We collect information about the trackers only if you've opted in to Ghostrank and even then, we can trace that back to you. So sending us examples of sites that you are having issues with is the only way we can investigate your specific use case.
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Well, I have the latest version of Firefox, and primarily use that browser. I have checked preferences, privacy, settings, general, advanced, etc. and checked links to the Mozilla site. There is no (media.autoplay.enabled preference). If you like, I can take screenshots of all the options available to me as an enduser. It would also be nice, if Ghostery employees actually sent an option to respond specifically to this issue, as it is not possible to respond to your emails, only on this public posting.
And, yes, I realize that the major browser vendors earn money from advertising. I have no complaint with optional earning of money from advertising. However, what I am presenting here in your public forum is that there is NO OPTION for me to adjust a setting, either on the private web-sites, or in the browser(s) for me to not activate auto play of media advertising that is embedded when certain web-pages load. For the most part, it seems to be on some of the major network news pages. So the only option is to click off the page, which of course is really supporting paid subscription services. However, why pay for news subscription services, if advertising is still automatic, without an option to either deselect as video starts to play, or to deselect as an option such as what you have suggested exists for me in Firefox. I am stating, that I sure cannot find that option in preferences or settings, in Firefox (30.0) Apple Macbook. Now maybe what you are referring to is a setting option that is listed somewhere else, rather than in the typical (I'm presuming my taskbar layout is typical)taskbar accessible data options.
What is important to ME, is the fact that as an enduser, I have tried to use every accessible option to NOT ALLOW AUTOPLAY of any video, audio media. If I select it, then great. If I activate a little play button, then fine. However, if there is no other option than AUTOPLAY, then I am saying that is stealing my bites of data that I am paying for.
And yes, if my only option is NOT TO VIEW those websites, then I am quite cognizant of the fact that my viewing of freely accesible information on the internet is becoming increasingly decreased. So what I am suggesting that advertising tactics such as autoplay is a sneaky way to decrease nonpaying viewers from viewing anything on certain large corporate websites.-
No, I don't need screenshots — they're already online.
Most major software products have "hidden preferences" (or "expert" settings) that are deliberately concealed from newbies. If you ask a question about Firefox on Mozilla's official support site, you may be instructed to open about:config to manipulate these. There are also many optional extensions that don't actually add any functionality beyond what you already have, they merely provide a more convenient user interface to access it. (And there are also scammers who charge money for such things, although that sort of exploitation is far more common on Windows platforms.)
As an OS X user, you may already know about the defaults mechanism, and various third-party interfaces like TinkerTool, OnyX, and CLIX. It's the same concept.
I don't want to get into a protracted discussion about business models, but yes, you do get to vote with your feet (and your wallet). E.g., if you don't want to pay to watch forced advertising, don't sign up for Hulu Plus. -
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I hope I am addressing what is basically 2 issues as clearly as I know how to address the problems.
#1. I have tried to not enable any automatic audio and video on any website that I may click on as an enduser. Why? because I am aware of the fact that media streaming eats into the monthly access charge that I am paying. I also do not like to be bombarded by any animated video, or audio when I am initially searching for certain factual information. I personally find that disturbing as I read.
#2. Although as an enduser, I have selected every option that I am aware of to disable any automatic media play, there are still some media that automatically plays. I have found that on media that is basically infiltrating or overriding my personal viewer settings, that the following occurs.
a. On some sites, there is still an option to manually click on an ikon and turn off the autoplay media. Some of this media may or may not be advertising.
b. On some sites, there is no option to manually click on anything, other than to close the web-page. On those pages, the autoplay media has always been advertising, and has always been, on at this moment in time, unnamed by me as an enduser, on national corporate websites.
#3. As an aside, I realize my comments are only one user's experience. However, it sure reveals what is probably my personal bias as a user of the internet, and the bias of Ghostery as an advocate for advertising. Wasn't Ghostery supposed to be a service provided by the advertising industry to show a certain amount of goodwill and act as a means for the public to at least be aware of how the advertisers are monitoring, and gathering data about users, etc. etc.? As a user I was trying to refer to what I find is a real problem. Now, perhaps, I am totally ignorant of the data options to me in preferencial settings somewhere within whatever, on whatever page, or sublisting somewhere else.
So maybe I'll just focus my attention on using academic portals, and specific webistes, and never entertain the idea of even clicking onto the major national corporate websites.
If I want to be entertained, I'll pay for NETFLIX, which beats HULU by a mile.
If I have to suffer through an ad, then I'll click on one of the small-timers on YouTube, let them start building at least some revenue from ads.-
#1 You are far from alone in this.
#2 We are not responsible for the content on other people's websites. They are free to make their own decisions, even if they're bad ones. Your complaints should be directed at them, not us. Yes, there are sites that override media.autoplay.enabled; see
#3 Ghostery is not "provided by the advertising industry." Ghostery, Inc. is an independent company, some of whose employees formerly worked in the advertising industry. (Some may have left because they were disgusted with it.) Ghostery is not opposed to advertising per se; in some ways, it's no different from any other content. That said, there are responsible advertisers, irresponsible advertisers, and everything in between. The malicious variety can tarnish the inoffensive ones' reputations, and we're more than happy to help weed out the bad guys.
I don't want to give the impression of being unsympathetic; I'm well aware of the limitations imposed on mobile and satellite Internet users. While privacy is Ghostery's primary focus, performance is a secondary interest, and your issue does touch on the latter area. However, autoplay isn't within Ghostery's scope; that's really something for website authors to apply judiciously, and browser vendors to limit if things get out of hand. The current state of affairs is the result of the "noisy tab" problem, not bandwidth consumption.
If you've already set media.autoplay.enabled to false, enabled click to play for Flash, and found those aren't effective, you'll have to resort to site-specific measures. There are dedicated extensions for customizing the behavior of some extremely popular sites (including Facebook, YouTube, and Gmail). Beyond that, you're probably going to be looking for Greasemonkey scripts. That brings us back to Pete's question about which specific sites are giving you trouble. A vague reference to "major network news pages" or "corporate sites" doesn't help, since there are a lot of them, and they won't necessarily have very much in common. -
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