Blocking Google And Facebook Using Ad Block Plus And Ghostery

[Turk]

By Maurits Van Der Schee February 17, 2014

I was suprised to find out that both Google and Facebook were still tracking me after I installed “Ad Block Plus” with the “EasyPrivacy” subscription.

Facebook “like” widget not blocked on cnn.com
I was on CNN.com and I saw this little Facebook thingy:

I expected that to be blocked by “Ad Block Plus”, because I subscribed to the “EasyPrivacy” list.I started Firebug to see that the iframe was there and that is was loaded from the Facebook website:

In the “blockable items” I verified that this widget was not blocked:

This was unexpected to me, so I began to dig a little deeper in the workings of “Ad Block Plus”.

Google AdSense not blocked on nu.nl

On the Dutch news website (nu.nl) I saw that Google was whitelisted (shown green). I quickly found the filter source by hovering the rule, it said “Allow non-intrusive advertising”:

I was not aware of me allowing any advertising or tracking, especially not from Google. The main reason I have this plugin installed is to keep Google away. So, as you can understand I was not happy. How come Ad Block Plus had suddenly (from July 2013 according to dottech.org) decided some advertisers were better than others? Also why did “EasyPrivacy” not protect me against Facebook?
After some searching I found that this filter (that was enabled during the 2.0 update of the plugin) could be triggered with an obscure checkbox:

This “acceptable ads feature” (as they call it themselves) is enabled by default as you can read in the “acceptable-ads” FAQ. Also, they are admitting that they are being paid:

…we are being paid by some larger properties that serve non-intrusive advertisements… source

So what do you think? Has “Ad Block Plus” been paid by Google to unblock them? And why does the “EasyPrivacy” subscription not cover Facebook? Have they also been paid for that?

Ghostery to the rescue

What I did is that I installed Ghostery. It is another tool that promises to block tracking efforts. Make sure you configure it correctly:
1.Options – General – Sharing options – Disable GhostRank
2.Options – General – Blocking Options – Trackers – Select all
3.Options – General – Blocking Options – Cookies – Select all
4.Options – Advanced – Display Options – Select none
5.Options – Advanced - Performance Options – Select all

Ghostery does not make a secret of their business model:

…it’s is made by an advertising company called Evidon.. it is a Web tracking blocker that actually helps the ad industry – source

And remember, whenever you are not paying for a service, you are the product. So you better understand the business model behind these services. The business models of the Ad Block Plus and Ghostery plugins are (now) clear to me. This does NOT mean I endorse the use of these plugins. There are many arguments to use and also many to not use these plugins. Please keep a critical mind and decide for yourself!

Source

[SPECTRUM]

AdFender too ;)

[nuthut]

I do the same thing with opendns service and I don't have to download plug ins or use specific browsers for it to work

[calguyhunk]

What I did is that I installed Ghostery. It is another tool that promises to block tracking efforts. Make sure you configure it correctly:

1.Options – General – Sharing options – Disable GhostRank

2.Options – General – Blocking Options – Trackers – Select all

3.Options – General – Blocking Options – Cookies – Select all

4.Options – Advanced – Display Options – Select none

5.Options – Advanced - Performance Options – Select all

Pretty much exactly how I've configured Ghostery myself. Just 2 points for users/would be users, though.

Exclude "Allure Media" from "Advertizing" if you want certain sites like Gizmodo (and some of their sister sites, among others) to display properly. Also optionally, exclude "Disqus", "Livefyre" etc. from "Widgets" if you want comment forms to load on sites without having to reconfigure everytime. :)

Edited February 18, 2014 by calguyhunk