The Most Frequently Asked Question | The Purple Box

Whenever we tell someone new about Ghostery, the odds-on favorite for the the first question they ask is: “so how do you guys make money?”  Web users have learned to be skeptical when it comes to an allegedly free product.

We think that being skeptical is smart, and Ghostery is made for exactly the type of user who would ask this question with one raised eyebrow and one foot out of the door.

The data donation feature in Ghostery is called “GhostRank,” which is opt-in and anonymous. We know how important it is for us to make clear exactly how what data is shared and how we make use of GhostRank data.

Now that we have that out there, here’s more detail on those points above:

Ghostery is free to use.

We don’t collect any data whatsoever unless you specifically check a box in Ghostery’s options saying it’s okay. Evidon and Ghostery use data on trackers, not people. If you don’t opt in, the product isn’t affected in any way. We have no plans or intentions to make any of Ghostery’s features dependent on GhostRank participation.

Ghostery does not share any data about our users.

GhostRank data does not include things like “John Doe is a Midwestern car enthusiast.” It includes things like “Ad Network X’s tracking code was encountered 50 times on this car site.”  We hash IP addresses in our logs (we only keep those scrambled strings to help us do a basic user count), and we strip out query strings in the urls we collect in an effort to make sure there isn’t any user-specific information lurking there, either. Put simply, none of us could use GhostRank data to identify a user out on the web even if we were inclined to do so.

Ghostery is owned by Evidon, a for-profit company.

GhostRank data helps us to create solutions that help businesses. It enables site owners to detect all of the tracking technologies on their sites and maintain control of their data, and provides competitive intelligence for companies across the web.

Evidon and Ghostery have transparency at the core of our collective business model – it’s not a “main goal” or a “central value,” but the actual core of our company. All of our products increase visibility into the online advertising world, and those products are designed to meet the most rigorous standards of operational transparency

That’s important to note, because this transparency-by-design approach means healthy skeptics don’t have to simply trust that the things I’ve asserted in this post are true.  First, read our privacy policy, terms of use, and FAQ.  You’ll find that everything I’ve spelled out here is echoed there – we worked very hard to make sure we gave ourselves the right legal protections without leaving room in those documents for us to compromise. Secondly, Ghostery’s code is not at all obscure – anyone can unpack our extension and look directly at what the javascript is built to do. You can also use a header request inspector to view all the requests a page makes, including the l.ghostery.com requests we send (these inspectors are now built into many browsers or available as extensions themselves).

Skepticism is healthy, and beyond that, all of us at Ghostery applaud that approach.  But we hope that users don’t let skepticism turn into fear, uncertainty, and doubt about a product that can help you, in a safe and uncompromising way, be a better skeptic.  We hope you’ll opt into our data donation to help support the product, but we understand that requires a level of trust about what we do with the data.  To that end, if you have any questions, please find us on our support forums, Twitter, Facebook, and/or via email. You can also email me personally at andy@ghostery.com.

 

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