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https://www.ghostery.com/blog/ghostery-news/ghostery-acquired-cliqz/
We are overjoyed to announce that the Ghostery extension and mobile browsers have been acquired by Cliqz, a German company owned by Mozilla and Hubert Burda Media that builds ground-breaking browser technologies to make the internet more private and easier to use. Cliqz's marquee product is its desktop browser, whose built-in quick search and anti-tracking features empower users to quickly and safely explore the internet without sharing personal information or search queries with outside companies. This unique technology is powered by the Cliqz Human Web, a revolutionary way for a collective of users to contribute anonymous statistical data to improve the relevancy and safety of advanced Cliqz privacy features. Ghostery proudly joins this state-of-the-art browser and the rest of the Cliqz product suite to set a new standard in privacy protection. Additionally, as part of this acquisition, Ghostery and Cliqz will continue to work closely with our previous parent company, Evidon, to help the organization support its industry-leading Digital Governance solutions by continuing to provide the same aggregated tracker data that we have previously.
What does this mean for Ghostery users?
First, rest assured that Ghostery will remain an independent product and that the same passionate (and uncommonly attractive) product team committed to its success will be joining the Cliqz family as a subsidiary company. Second, to put it simply, Ghostery is about to become smarter, more powerful, and easier to use. The Cliqz anti-tracking technology is a truly revolutionary solution that uses algorithmic blocking that doesn't require a blocklist, a feature we will integrate into Ghostery as soon as we possibly can. Third, we are making Ghostery immediately available on the Cliqz browser, so if you want to see this chocolate-and-peanut-butter relationship between algorithmic and blocklist anti-tracking in action, you can check it out right now. Finally, Ghostery data collection will remain the same for all existing users, will be strengthened by Cliqz's best-in-class privacy practices, and will be done in accordance with Germany data privacy laws, the strictest in the world. While data collection will remain the same, we have updated our privacy statements to reflect the change of ownership, which you can see here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17 2017, @08:04PM
The new versions just keep getting worse and worse. Setting stored in the "cloud" and strongly suggesting you get an account. I'm still using the version from before this happened on all my systems. I gave the new one a shot and promptly rolled back. A few systems got the new version until things changed yet again and when it became irritating a few months ago I hunted down the "better" version.
As for alternatives, I have ublock and I've tried privacy badger which seems to block nothing by default. All in all I don't feel there is a replacement besides adding more lists to ublock.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17 2017, @08:07PM
Ever try privoxy?
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Friday February 17 2017, @09:21PM
Privoxy can be handy, but editing its configuration may not be everyone's cup of tea. When last I checked, it came with pre-written configurations that could block many ad networks. However, those may be outpaced by the advertising industry because updates are infrequent: there were three releases of it in 2016, one release in 2015 and one in 2014.
http://www.privoxy.org/ [privoxy.org]
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa/files/Sources/ [sourceforge.net]
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday February 18 2017, @04:22PM
I use privoxy as the *first* line to the internet - and custom whitelists for local machines.
If you're browser has other blockers (ublock origin and uMatrix are the best) you can construct "per site" preferences.
I've got 14 firefox, a few chromium and one chrome browser - for google.
The odd seamonkey (for old routers with out of data certs!!!), and i even browser some sites with opera.
Sandboxing has greatly improved browser security, but we also need "op sec" from the user.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday February 18 2017, @04:57PM
If [your] browser has other blockers (ublock origin and uMatrix are the best) you can construct "per site" preferences.
It's possible to do that with privoxy alone, although learning to configure it isn't easy. I'm sure some of the readers here could master it; I have not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @05:14PM
The first rule of Privoxy is that you don't talk about Privoxy. Therefore, please shut-the-hell-up.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday February 17 2017, @08:55PM
The new versions just keep getting worse and worse.
I have a question here:
Does anyone know of any software these days, proprietary or FOSS, that the above statement is not true for?
I can't think of much. PostgreSQL perhaps.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Saturday February 18 2017, @06:17PM
Windows 7 -> Windows 8 -> Windows 10?
Oracle $version -> Oracle $version+1?
Gnome 2 -> Gnome 3?
Firefox 2 -> Firefox 1.03e+22?
Nope.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:06AM
To be fair, I do need to disagree about Firefox.
While the new UI is indeed crap, I have to admit that Firefox, at least for me, is FAR more stable than it was about 3 years ago. And the crap UI I only really notice when I use the hamburger menu anyway. Most of the time, I just see the tabs, and then the traditional menu when I hit Alt. It's better than Chrom[e|ium]'s UI which is ugly all the time.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday February 19 2017, @12:41PM
Devuan.
emacs.
Modula 3
gcc
mutt
ls
cp
ext file systems
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @07:32AM
None of those are common user-end programs. VLC has been improving along with software related to illegal activities. For some reason all the 'bad' software is good.