As these become more popular we shall see a return to server analytics. Time to install AwStats...
I wish more people used server analytics. Less privacy risk to the user, along with a faster and less congested internet connection...
Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
41–50 of 77 posts
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#42I like Ghostery better. It breaks less websites for me and provides more data on each particular tracker with a source link and a description for the company behind it. Disconnect just shows a title with a number. It has a nicer and more functional UI. I like a popup on page load where you can instantly see what is blocked and what isn't. There's an option to "run once" a blocked widget on page, which can be handy.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516156/a-popular-ad-blo... 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.
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).
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#43I often find that Disconnect can be overly aggressive in the parts of a page that it blocks. When something is amiss when using a webpage whitelisting the site in Disconnect usually fixes the problem.
This also happens with Ghostery and to a lesser extent, Adblock. I switched from Ghostery to Disconnect and have found Disconnect to be a little better at not breaking some sites. The worst sites I've ran into while using Ghostery/Disconnect are the ones that have a Google Analytics action tracking code in the middle of their Javascript methods (since the addons block GA) so the entire site/app fails to work. Develop…
Blocking on analytics loading could be intentional.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would never, ever, spend time testing something that changes my code. Today it changes it one way, tomorrow another. That's like trying to replace the screen on your phone and then complaining that it doesn't work and that Samsung/Apple should test their devices with your screen installation skills.
According to addons.mozilla.org, Adblock Plus for Firefox has almost 20 million users. You would "never, ever" perform tests using popular browser extensions that have tens of millions of users? How does your co-founder/employer/client feel about your position?
Pretty sure that is number of installations. I've installed Adblock more than once but got rid of it quickly and never use it now.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#45I am using StartPage https://startpage.com/ as my search engine and am very happy with it.
They essentially redirect your search query to google and return you the result. But they don't collect your IP nor anything else. https://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#46This is just going to be another arms race.
It's only an arm race if a lot of people uses it and it becomes a problem to business owners.
Sad truth is: all these "privacy" plugins break ads. Many people install them for that purpose alone and use privacy as excuse. Even if a website provide local ads because it values the privacy of its users: those are blocked too.
From a website owner's perspective privacy plugins are ad-blockers.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
This also happens with Ghostery and to a lesser extent, Adblock. I switched from Ghostery to Disconnect and have found Disconnect to be a little better at not breaking some sites. The worst sites I've ran into while using Ghostery/Disconnect are the ones that have a Google Analytics action tracking code in the middle of their Javascript methods (since the addons block GA) so the entire site/app fails to work. Develop…
I would never, ever, spend time testing something that changes my code. Today it changes it one way, tomorrow another. That's like trying to replace the screen on your phone and then complaining that it doesn't work and that Samsung/Apple should test their devices with your screen installation skills.
If a resource fails to load, do you not care about that also?
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait developers should test extensions that make arbitrary changes to their javascript? That doesn't seem reasonable.
I’m the developer of Disconnect and agree with you, but … To back up the op and gp, I’m seeing more and more sites that don’t degrade gracefully when their analytics service doesn’t load. I do think devs should check that their site still works when non-essential services fail to load because, even when the user isn’t running Disconnect or a similar app, this scenario is bound to happen — e.g., when there’s a network…
Many companies consider controlling essential to do business.
But even if you disagree, you would do end user support a huge favor if you could mention that "It alters the webpages you visit and may break them." next to the download button.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#49Using disconnect's proxy? Looks like a trap to me. Give me proof, you discard all the data, then we are talking. Otherwise this approach is mostly flawed.
Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster
#50Though it's not advertised on the landing page, Lightbeam has a block functionality: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ It's also endorsed by mozilla, which makes me trust it more. I've been using it for a while (on top of noscript) and it's quite informative and seems to work well. My personal setup is noscript with careful whitelisting which I've found to effectively disable most tracking.
> It's also endorsed by mozilla, which makes me trust it more. Somewhat skeptical, given that Mozilla referred to in-browser ads as "user-enhancing": https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504 https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...
Mockup of the ads: https://bug972916.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=837...
In this case I think Mozilla is right, many users will be happy to have a quick facebook/amazon/twitter/ebay shortcut out of the box.