Whenever someone talks about Ghostery, this is, of course, brought up. However, what isn't brought up that providing this data (GhostRank) is voluntary and I think it's disabled by default (but user is asked during the first time setup).
Whenever someone says that Ghostery own tracking is optional, one, of course, glances over a huge inherent conflict of interest behind Ghostery.
They make an anti-tracking product and they takes money from advertisers. That's their life blood, they need to track you, that's how they survive and it puts them in a very precarious situation. So trusting them to value your interests over their own is naive at best. If you are comfortable with the risk and the trade-off, good for you, but dismissing this as a non-issue is disingenious.
but dismissing this as a non-issue is disingenious.
It is a non-issue if you have to opt in. Also, they make money off of GhostRank data by 'consulting' on how to better present ads to encourage selective turn-off of adblocker
I think Ghostery's motivations are fairly clear -- a viable business model.
I can't think of a clear business model for disconnect.me.
In any case, it's good to have a choice. People who are serious (who don't mind breaking everything) are probably using something like RequestPolicy to control cross-site requests. https://www.requestpolicy.com/
From the article:
A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry
Millions of people use the tool Ghostery to block online tracking technology—some may not realize that it feeds data to the ad industry.
It's good to have alternatives, and I prefer Disconnect as Ghostery's motivations seem a little clouded.