A recent update to Ghostery has improved the tracker tracker browser plug-in. Websites may include a variety of mechanisms to make your experience better (good features such as typeface management and functions that allow you to share content), ones that track where you've been and report information about you (not so good), and ones that work with specific websites to highlight things that interest you (good or bad depending on your point of view). Ghostery makes it possible for you to tell them apart and to block the ones you don't want.
As the Ghostery website puts it, "You are being tracked." You probably already knew that, but you might not be aware how pervasive the tracking is. Information about what you do when you're on line is valuable. Nothing is free.
Consider the American approach to radio and television. Except for NPR and PBS, radio and television appear to be free. But when something appears to be free, there's a good chance that you're the product. Radio and television stations and networks exist to deliver listeners and viewers to advertisers. On-line content that appears to be free is designed to expose you to advertisements.
That may be OK and even expected, but websites can also collect invasive information about you and send it back to companies you've never heard of.
The Ghostery browser extension shows you exactly how many trackers are following you and lets you choose which ones to allow and which ones to block. You can block individual trackers or entire classes of trackers. For example, a single mouse click will allow you to render 1389 advertising trackers null and void. Not all advertising trackers are bad, though, and some can help you find good deals when you're looking for a product or service. You might want to allow some and block others. Ghostery makes this easy.
The Ghostery tracker database knows about more than 2000 trackers. Most of these are advertising trackers, but others include audio and video players, customer interaction trackers, "pornvertising", site analytics (usually harmless), a group called "essential", and social media connectors. More on those in a bit.
Ghostery lets you manage who sees your information. Whatever your comfort level, you can configure the browser add-in to be completely open, totally closed, or somewhere in between.
Ghostery is available for Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, IOS devices, and Android devices. Note that I didn't mention Microsoft's new Edge browser. Currently it does not accept any add-ons.
Ghostery's video explains it:
Trackers aren't inherently good or bad. They can customize your on-line experience (good) or they can bug you with information you don't want. I recently was looking at information about a lens for a camera and suddenly I was being peppered with ads for the lens. That might have been OK if I had really been in the market for the lens, but I wasn't. Behind the scenes, trackers can build profiles of what you're looking at on the Web. The results can be good or bad.
Ghostery puts you in control. You can decide who sees your data based on individual trackers. While you can block all trackers in a given category, that's usually not the best solution, so Ghostery lets you pick and choose on a case-by-case basis. You'll see how many trackers are present on every page you're viewing.
When you block some of the trackers, you may notice that your browser seems to be faster. That's because less information is being transmitted. But the Ghostery website points out that blocking too many (or the wrong kinds) of trackers can reduce the benefits users get from trackers that help make their Internet experience more pleasant and customized.
The application shows you how many trackers it found and what categories they're in. When you have that information, you can decide whether you want to allow them or not and clicking a link on the display reveals a list of all trackers.
The point is that you're in control of your own experience on the Web when you enlist Ghostery to help you.
You can create an account with Ghostery and I recommend it, but it's not a requirement. If you have multiple installations of Ghostery, an account allows you to share settings among them. That's why I recommend it.
Ghostery provides a settings page that gives the user complete control over how the application works.
Among the settings are ones to select a language and to turn the service on and off. When Ghostery is off, it will allow trackers on all sites. You can also specify whether automatic updates will be downloaded for the Ghostery tracker library and whether it should replace any blocked social media buttons with a Ghostery icon so that you'll know something is being suppressed.
You can have Ghostery display a warning when it is blocking a feature that's essential for the proper operation. For example, some interactive features, such as video players, social media buttons, and comments sections won’t work without allowing a certain tracker.
You can specify whether you want to support Ghostery by by providing (anonymously) page and tracker data. Ghostery uses this information in providing services to site owners.
When your browser loads a page, Ghostery can display a count of trackers it found. You can decide where on the page you want that to appear or to turn if off.
Trackers are grouped in several categories: advertising, audio/video player, comments, customer interaction, essential, pornvertising, site analytics, and social media.
You can choose to allow or block entire categories. For most users, the broad-brush approach probably won't work very well.
Or you can expand the list under each category and allow or disallow individual trackers. Yet another option, and one that most people will probably choose, involves leaving all trackers enabled and then disabling the ones you don't want on an individual basis as you encounter them.
Another setup tab makes it possible to identify trusted sites where all trackers will be permitted regardless of how you've defined them elsewhere. A final setup tab is for restricted sites where all trackers will be disallowed even if you allow them generally or allow them on other sites.
Is it really "free"? The Ghostery website puts it this way: "We rely on Ghostery users who opt-in to share their anonymous information about the data collection technologies they see, and where they see them. We take that information, add our analysis, and sell it to companies to help them audit and manage their relationships with these marketing and advertising technologies. None of the information we share is about our users nor is it stored in a way that could be used to trace back to our users. You’re opted out of sharing your data by default, meaning you can use Ghostery without sharing anything with us if you'd prefer. (But please opt-in. It is how we keep Ghostery free and continue to make it the best tool out there!)"
If you're the suspicious sort (and you should be), you may be wondering what information Ghostery collects from you. If you create a user account, Ghostery will collect your name and email address. The company says that the information will be used only to synchronize your extension settings across browsers and devices, to allow you to log on to the Ghostery website, and to allow Ghostery to communicate with you to provide information about products, updates, and upgrades. If you allow it, Ghostery will also send anonymous information about trackers you encounter.
Ghostery uses this information to help website owners make their sites more responsive. A website owner can pay Ghostery for analysis and assistance. The service helps site owners determine why pages are slow, identifies tags that may be included on a site without permission. In other words, the goal is to make things better whether you're a site visitor or a site owner.
This review, however, does not consider the services that Ghostery provides for site owners.
Ghostery eliminates the trackers that you don't want and does it for freeGhostery is a clever add-on that lets users see the trackers and control them. Trackers aren't inherently good or bad, but it's good when you can see them and decide for yourself whether to allow them.
Additional details are available on the Ghostery website.
Government security agencies have a legitimate interest in wanting to be able to collect information and evidence. People have a legitimate interest in wanting to protect their information. As the current case regarding the FBI and Apple shows, finding a balance is difficult.
CIA Director John Brennan described the government's case in terms of a bank safe deposit box. Imagine a bank safe deposit box that the government could not gain access to, he said. The problem with that analogy, though, is that nobody has created a tool that could give anyone access to every safe deposit box, while creating software that could open one protected device would make it possible for anyone to open any device once they gained access to the software.
And you can be sure that they would. But let's leave that to the courts and the politicians and look instead at some advances in hardware security.
Fujitsu has started shipping a 13-inch tablet that converts into a traditional clamshell notebook when a dockable keyboard is attached. The company says that it's more secure that competing tablets because it enables authentication with biometrics or SmartCard technology. The Stylistic Q736 includes support for SmartCard and near-field communication technology (NFC). By default, it's storage media are encrypted to protect against unauthorized access to data.
Fujitsu says that the new tablet allows users, once they have been authenticated, to access corporate data on a business network. The tablet features 4G / LTE communications and built-in GPS.
People (being people) can lock themselves out of secure devices or they can leave an unlocked device in a hotel room and Fujitsu's Jörg Hartmann says the company has taken a human-centric approach that attempts to eliminate weak points. The new tablet incorporates "the latest biometric and SmartCard security technologies," Hartman says, "to reduce the chance of simple, but potentially disastrous mistakes, such as someone leaving their tablet unlocked in a public place."
The tablet has some impressive specifications: A 6th Generation Intel Core i7 vPro processor and a high-resolution anti-glare dual digitizer touchscreen display with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. An optional keyboard docking station provides additional interfaces and a slot for a second battery.
The latest edition of Webroot's annual Threat Brief says that nearly all malware is now designed in a way that makes signature-based security virtually useless. Many attacks are staged, delivered, and terminated in just a few hours and sometimes within minutes. In other words, it might happen so fast that you won't even see it. That's not a very comforting thought.
The report says that malware and potentially unwanted applications (PUAs) have become overwhelmingly polymorphic, which means that signature-based detection no longer works.
Zero-day phishing sites are becoming more common. These attacks are becoming the most common choice for stealing identities.
Technology companies such as Google, Apple, and Facebook have been targeted by phishing attacks more frequently than financial institutions such as banks and PayPal. These tech companies are targeted because people often use the same login credentials to access many other websites.
Protective measures that examine IP addresses are less effective because thousands of new malicious IP addresses are being created every day in 2015. Where are all these malicious IP addresses? Not China. Not Russia. The US continues to have the lead with more than 40% of the rogue IP addresses. China, Japan, Germany, and the UK combined have about 35% of the malicious IP addresses.
Webroot is, of course, attempting to sell its own services by describing these threats, but that doesn't make the threats any less real. "2015 was yet another record year for cybercrime, during which more malware, malicious IPs, websites, and mobile apps were discovered than in any previous year," according to Webroot's chief technology officer, Hal Lonas.
Lonas says that the cybercrime ecosystem continues to thrive, given new innovations and little in the way of risk. The continued onslaught of hacks, breaches, and social engineering scams targeting individuals, businesses, and government agencies make the job of protecting users more complex.
You can download a copy of the Webroot 2016 Threat Brief from the Webroot website.
Malware defense company ESET has released a survey that details some of the more significant threats faced by businesses. The survey includes feedback from more than 1700 IT professionals in 11 countries.
The most common security incident reported by respondents was malware infections and more than half said that they had seen the problems on their networks. It appears, though, that too few IT managers are watching what could be a back door to their networks -- mobile devices used by employees.
We Live Security editor, Raphael Castro, says that Android ransomeware is increasing. WeLiveSecurity.com is ESET's research and news platform.
Maybe you never even heard of it. Google Compare allowed web users to examine offers for car insurance, credit cards, and mortgages. Now, after less than a year in the US, it's shutting down.
Google Compare was launched in March 2015 in the US. The UK version had been in operation for several years. It was supposed to simplify the process of finding financial services and Google would, of course, earn a commission on referrals in most cases and, in some cases, Google would actually sell the product or service.
Google developed partnerships with several insurance companies so that they would have access to broker networks. The partners have been notified that the service will be ending within a month.
People search for financial information on line, but an e-mail from Google said that Compare "hasn't driven the success we hoped for." In general, most people still seem to prefer to work with traditional insurance agents.
Google wasn't the only company offering this kind of competition to agents and it's unlikely that agents have heard the last of Google.
