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Creepiest Add-On Ever

May 10th, 2009

Ghostery is a Firefox add-on with a Zen simplicity: it tells you who’s watching you, via ad networks and “web bugs.”  It doesn’t try to stop them from watching you, or do anything about it.  It just lets you know.  Which is somehow even creepier than doing something about it….  “Oh, Google Analytics knows you visited this page.  Quantcast is watching you visit this page.  Tacoda and WebTrends both know you visited this page.”

It’s an unassuming little box in the upper right hand corner of the web page.  It disappears after a few seconds.  No big deal.  Easy to miss it.

On this page, on goesping.org, it tells you google adsense and doubleclick are both watching you.  Since I put the ads on these pages.  I don’t think I’ve ever made so much as a penny from them.  Checking… nope, never a penny.  Maybe it’s time to give up on that experiment.  Turn down the creep factor a notch.

Ed That Goes Ping General

  1. David Cancel
    May 14th, 2009 at 15:21 | #1
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    Hi,

    I’m the author of Ghostery. Thanks for trying it out.

    Just so you know I’m currently working on v2.0 which will add blocking and information on what these web bugs actually are.

    Thanks again,
    David

  2. Moab
    May 15th, 2009 at 12:16 | #2
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    Interesting. May install it for creepy fun.

  3. Matt Lyons
    June 18th, 2009 at 21:29 | #3
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    It is creepy isn’t it? You’re one of the few blogs I’ve seen without any ‘ghosts’, I’ve seen some with more than ten!

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