Worried about advertisers and social networks tracking your movements on the web? Wayne Williams tests six tools that can help you block them
Privacy Badger
Privacy Badger is from the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), a non-profit organisation that has 25 years’ experience of defending civil liberties and privacy in the digital world.
Privacy Badger is available for Firefox and Chrome, and blocks thousands of spying ads and invisible trackers. It sits unobtrusively at the top of your browser looking for snooping elements, and automatically blocks any it detects. Clicking the icon displays a list of ad domains on the current site - sorted into those that track you and those that don’t - with colour coded sliders next to each one. Initially, these sliders will all be green, showing that they are unblocked, but Privacy Badger will soon learn which to deny and which to allow, and take action accordingly. You can also choose to block domains manually - either fully or partially (the latter just prevents the use of cookies).
Social-networking buttons, which can be used to spy on your online movements, are replaced and marked on the web page, which is a great idea.
We also like the filter-settings page, which lets you choose what action to take with potential tracking domains. You can whitelist domains you trust, and enable or disable social widget replacements. Privacy Badger can be disabled on any site, and you can report any sites that the add-on prevents from working.
There aren’t a huge number of settings to tinker with. This makes it great for casual users, but a bit basic for anyone requiring greater control over what’s allowed or disallowed. It would be useful, too, if you could simply click the marker on a web page to re-enable a social widget that’s been disabled.
Trustworthy, accurate and easy to use, there’s very little to complain about with Privacy Badger. It’s an intelligent piece of software that only blocks domains after justifying that it needs to do so.
Disconnect Private Browsing
Disconnect can prevent sites such as Facebook, Google and Twitter from tracking your activities and searches. Clicking its button in your browser displays the number of advertising, analytics, social and content requests that have been made, and lets you allow or block them. You can also whitelist or blacklist a site.
You can see at a glance how much time and bandwidth Disconnect has managed to save you, and the Visualise Page option displays a graph that shows which sites would have received your information if the add-on hadn’t blocked them.
Hover your mouse over the central circle to see the full list of domains that are linked to the current site in some way. Clicking any of the links in the list will open that site in a new tab, so you can find out more about it. Circles shown with a halo are ones you’ve visited; circles without a halo are ones you haven’t. Red sites are trackers, which you can block or unblock by clicking them in the graph.
We’d prefer to have more control; you can turn features on or off, but there are no settings to tinker with. Also, certain advanced features are only available the paid-for Premium edition.
Disconnect does a great job and you get a sense of satisfaction seeing how much time and bandwidth the add-on has managed to save you by blocking trackers. The Visualise page is excellent.
Ghostery
I Ghostery is available for all the major browsers including Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari. As you browse the web, it identifies tracking elements on websites, such as web bugs, and lists the companies that have an interest in finding out where you go online. Clicking an entry provides information about the tracker, and you can block it or allow it on that site. You can temporarily pause all blocking or completely whitelist a site.
Ghostery has several settings to play around with, including the option to make certain blocked content ‘click to play' (which is available in the Advanced section). This means you can quickly activate blocked content, such as a video player, if you need to use it.
Ghostery is unquestionably very good, but we’re not keen on some of its recent additions. A new Consumer Messaging Platform that allows Ghostery to display promotional messages in your browser is enabled by default. It can quickly be disabled under Options, Advanced but we’d prefer it to be opt-in. Also, when you first install Ghostery, you’ll be shown a survey asking for personal information, including employment status, age, sex and so on. You can easily close this tab and ignore the survey, but it would be better if it didn’t open it in the first place.
Ghostery is a very good privacy add-on with plenty of options and a configuration wizard that walks you through the setup. It would be better if it didn’t automatically opt you into promotional messages and a survey, though.
Adblock Plus
The popular Adblock Plus extension removes the majority of annoying adverts from websites; you just install it and browse as normal. However, if you take the time to choose and configure the filter list, it can also prevent web bugs and tracking scripts from recording your personal details as you browse the web.
AVG PrivacyFix
AVG PrivacyFix is a browser add-on for Firefox and Chrome that can check your privacy settings across various websites including Facebook, Twitter, Google and Linkedln, and let you quickly make changes to them. If it finds potential weak areas, it will take you to the settings so you can make the required changes. It doesn’t make the changes for you, but rather leaves things in your hands. For a bit of fun, the site estimates your worth to the major social sites.
AdBlock
Not to be confused with Adblock Plus, this add on for Chrome, Firefox and Safari will block all adverts automatically, although you can choose to allow certain types, and whitelist your favourite YouTube channels. You can see at a glance just how many ads have been blocked to date. There are additional filter lists available that will allow it to block social media buttons and protect your privacy.