Anyone else find Ghostery a nuisance?

[Old Sparky]

Recently Ghostery, which I installed some time ago, has changed the way it operates.  Apart from now wanting users to sign up to additional features, it seems to be the cause of slow switching from one site toanother, or even from one page to another on the same site, whilst checks how many trackers are present.  TBH I find all that a ****** nuisance, and may well unsubscribe from Ghostery.  Do members know of an alternative, less obtrusive means of achieving the same result.  I have heard of Adblocker, but are thre others?

[ppppenguin]

Adblock Plus and Ghostery do 2 different things. AB+ blocks ads, Ghostery stops tracking cookies. I run them both. They don't seem to affect the speed of anything on Firefox on a fast modern PC with a good internet connection. They didn't seem to affect speed on an older and slower PC.

What can be a nuisance, especially as I block all 3rd party cookies, is that between these precuations some websites don't work properly. Some ticketing websites need 3rd party cookies (why, if others can do without) and between Adblock+ and Ghostery a few sites don't really work at all. Typical example is if I'm in Money Saving Expert (highly recommended) and click a link to another site such as a bank etc it sometimes gets blocked due to advertising , trackers or something. If I find any of these nuisances and really need to use the site I use another browser, Chrome in my case, which I run without Ghostery etc.

You can check if, say, Ghostery is causing slowdowns by disabling it temporarily. It's easy to delude yourslef that "X" is the problem when it's soemthing else.

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
I'm sorry but I don't get this at all. Either I'm really lucky or it's all down to Windows but I never ever get adverts or pop ups on websites since I put Windows in the bucket. My Asus laptop of late 2015 had Windows 10 installed and without a doubt it was dreadful, it did a lot of updates in the two months I lived with it and the rubbish that invaded my internet experience was maddening. I eventually installed Mint on it and its great. No added virus programs, Ghostery or anything else, just the updates when they show up, these take just a few minutes.
Like I say perhaps I'm lucky but my sneaky feeling is I'm not.

[ppppenguin]

Unless Linux Mint instals an ad blocker as standard (i think it uses Firefox as its standard browser) then I don't know why you don't get ads. Modern browsers normally suppress popups on all operating systems unless you explicitly allow them.

As for trackers and 3rd party cookies,  unless you're using Ghostery  or something similar you'll never know about them.

Incidentally, Linux is not totally immune to viruses etc. A lot safer than Windows but I read this advice here: https://www.howtogeek.com/135392/htg-exp...en-you-do/

• Keep Your Software Updated: In an age when browsers and their plug-ins – particularly Java and Flash – are the top targets, staying up-to-date with the latest security patches is important. The biggest malware problem on Mac OS X was caused by the Java plug-in. With a cross-platform piece of software like Java, the same vulnerability can work on Windows, Mac, and Linux. On Linux, you can update all your software with a single, integrated updater.
  
• Beware Phishing: Phishing – the practice of creating websites that pretend to be other websites – is just as dangerous on Linux or Chrome OS as it is on Windows. If you visit a website that pretends to be your bank’s website and enter your banking information, you are in trouble. Luckily, browsers like Firefox and Chrome on Linux have the same anti-phishing filter they do on Windows. You don’t need an Internet security suite to protect against phishing. (However, bear in mind that the phishing filter doesn’t catch everything.)
  
• Don’t Run Commands You Don’t Trust: The Linux command prompt is powerful. Before you copy-paste a command you read somewhere into the terminal, ask yourself whether you trust the source. It could be one of the 8 Deadly Commands You Should Never Run on Linux.
  

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
Well I do the updates when they appear, I use the update manager and all security updates appear there.

I'm also well aware of Phishing websites but I'm not an internet fiend and restrict myself to what I am into and don't sit on the net just browsing. I also don't hibernate any of my PC's they are shut down when I finish a session .

I only use "terminal" for GQRX and don't use any other commands.

Perhaps that's why I don't have problems.
I think too many are reliant on using programs for keeping their computers clean etc, surely good practices and common sense are the first line of defence?