Do-Not-Track Tools: Hands-On Showdown - hambybuir1998

Online tracking is a hot topic these years, with the Obama administration and the FTC career for tougher online privacy protections. The FTC recently issued a report urging voluntary practices for online businesses regarding data collection. Another favourite proposal suggests building a cosmopolitan do-not-track function into future Web browsers.

The proposed universal do-not-track tool won't be in particular beefy, since it would simply relieve oneself your browser send a "please don't track me" quest to a website. Given the previous misbehaviors of Internet behemoths such as Facebook and Google, information technology's lignified to put much organized religion in a solution that depends on the best intentions of site owners.

Nevertheless, that's the gist of the FTC's appeal to Internet businesses for conscious cooperation. Specifically, the delegacy suggests that privacy controls should be incorporated into new products and services by design (including that perform-non-track feature in all browser, maybe); that consumers should have simple ways to control their personal information; and that corporate data-collection practices should be transparent.

On balance, however, most of us give via our eyeballs and our personal data for the majority of the information we access online. Targeted ads–sometimes laughably off-base, sometimes appropriate supported demographics–pop ascending happening many sites in lieu of a paywall. If you really hatred the ads, or if you don't want to share anything about yourself and your browse habits, you mightiness vanquis out for ad-free access to a site.

The key here is the request transparence. Sites commonly use cookies, a bit of code, to recognize you the side by side time you return. In some cases, cookies are an important contribution of the way the Web works. You couldn't clack a Facebook "Like" button and suffer it work automatically, for lesson, without a cookie from the social network determinant that you were signed in to Facebook.

But much cookies follow you around the Web. These tracking cookies, stashed in your web browser, note your browsing habits and online activity, and can supporte a trailing company fix reserve ads. Companies may serve the ads directly, or betray your information.

The Federal Trade Commission's proposals ask that privacy beryllium the default, that sites' compendium habits beryllium clear, and that browsers provide around trade protection from tracking–but think, those are all just suggestions.

If you really want to stop sites from tracking you, and if you don't want to rely on a place's goodwill, you can address several browser add-ons that will shield your Web browsing habits from a host of advertizing and behavioral-tracking technologies–or at any rate alert you to their interest, and enable you to cede or reject the asking.

Here's a hands-on look at three tools designed to keep your browsing bodily function semiprivate.

AVG Do-Not-Running

AVG's free antivirus course of study for Windows now comes with a Ut-Not-Cut web browser add-along that plant with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

To get started, download AVG 2012 and and then run an update to obtain the appurtenance. Current AVG users will receive the new creature as an machine rifle update. AVG automatically installs its Exercise-Not-Track feature in any of the three browsers available on your system of rules.

Immediately after installation, decide whether you privation AVG's Behave-Non-Track tool to warning signal you whenever it detects a tracking cookie. To enable this feature, tick the AVG icon and select Alert me when gymnastic trackers are perceived. Even so, I don't commend activating the autoloading alert, since IT causes the AVG supplement to bring out a pop-up book window every time IT detects cookies along a page; considering that all but all site has some physique of trailing on that, dealings with these belt down-ups can become tiresome pretty quickly.

Settings: Although AVG automatically blocks a wide-eyed variety of ad networks away nonpayment, it doesn't block single elite and Web-analytics features. Among the trackers it leaves unblocked are Comscore Lighthouse, Facebook Connect, Facebook Social Plugins, Google +1, Google Analytics, LinkedIn, LinkedIn Push, Twitter Button, and Yahoo Analytics. If you'd equivalent to block some of those items, click the AVG Do-Not-Get over icon, select Settings, and choose cookies under 'Block the chase'.

AVG also adds a "do-non-track" lintel to your web browser. This tells websites that honor the header to respect your wishes and not endeavour to set any trailing cookies.

Browsing the Web: AVG's Do-Not-Track addition keeps a running game count of how many another trackers it detects happening a unary page As that page loads. On PCWorld.com, for representative, AVG establish four trackers: cardinal World Wide Web analytics trackers and two social buttons. The tool didn't block any of them, however, since by default option it wasn't set to stop so much cookies.

When AVG detects a cookie that it is set to block, the tool shows that cooky's name in the bulge out-up window with a line intersectant through it. To fancy more detailed information about a tracker, you can linger over its entry in the pop-up window.

In the example shown here, AVG is notification me about the Bizo advertizement cookie on the Wall Street Journal site. I put up see that the cooky collects personal and nonpersonal data, and that it shares its information with third parties. To report on what kinds of data each tracking cookie collects, AVG pulls information from the privacy policy of the company place setting the cooky.

Bottom line: In my tests, AVG's web browser add-on appeared to work decently, but IT was less husky than the other tools I tried. To its credit, AVG allows you to modify which cookies information technology blocks and which ones it doesn't. The downside, though, is that you essential download and install the stallion AVG antivirus program to get the Do-Not-Track tool. That's problematic, since AVG silence has some bad habits such as installing browser toolbars and attempting to interchange your browser's search provider by default option.

Following Page: DNT+, Ghostery, and Other Options

DNT+

Bean Town-based security company Abine offers a web browser appurtenance called Doctor of Osteopathy Not Chase away Plus (DNT+) that works with nigh major browsers, including Chromium-plate, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. Officially, DNT+ supports only Windows and Mac, but in my tests DNT+ also worked for Linux systems.

DNT+ is very similar to AVG's antitracking tool, except that you don't have to download an entire antivirus program to draw it–just visit Abine's DNT+ ware page, and snap the Download Now button. In my tests, Abine's system automatically detected my web browser type (Chrome) and installed the add-on. You can also find DNT+ in PCWorld's Downloads library, as well as in the Chromium-plate Web Stash awa and at the Firefox sum-on site.

An Abine representative told PCWorld that DNT+ blocks 580 tracking technologies; the rep too claims that the add-on speeds up Net browse by 40 per centum.

Settings: Similar to AVG, DNT+ comes with a set of tracking cookies blocked by nonpayment in its settings, but Abine's antitracking tool is much more militant than AVG's. In my tests, DNT+ stopped all of the cookies that AVG didn't block away default, including social cookies such as Facebook buttons and Google's +1 button.

When the tool blocks social buttons, companies such as Facebook and Google can't track you. Just DNT+ will still give up you to use these social functions if you click on them.

Keep in mind, however, that clicking on a social button bequeath identify you to that social network. In my tests with DNT+ on Chrome, this feature worked quite an well, but I was ne'er able to come the Facebook Wish button to work. Other social buttons, so much American Samoa those from Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter, did work.

Browsing the Web: Trying KO'd DNT+, I noticed a dramatic conflict in the amoun of tracking cookies that information technology detected in comparison with AVG. On the WSJ site, for example, AVG sensed just three trackers and only when one advertising network–but DNT+ found quintet ad networks, five activity trackers, and one multiethnic network. On PCWorld.com, the difference was eve larger, with DNT+ finding 13 trackers to AVG's four.

DNT+ doesn't volunteer as much detail near each individual trailing biscuit as AVG does. Alternatively, DNT+ groups cookies into three categories: social networks, ad networks, and behavioral-trailing companies. Clicking a segment expands IT so that you send away go through which tracking companies DNT+ is block. This sport at to the lowest degree gives you some mind about what each tracking cookie is up to.

Turn DNT+ off: Let's say that you clave Marvel.com and decide to allow tracking for that land site. To do so, tick the DNT+ icon and then select Blocking Tracking from the drop-down menu. This action leave automatically turn hit DNT+ for every last of Marvel.com, but you will have to reload the place's current page for the new setting to take effect. DNT+ leave remember this scope every time you visit Marvel.com in the future.

Bottom line: Abine's DNT+ is an effective do-non-track puppet that blocks a wide range of unwanted advertisers and other tracking companies. One strange matter is that DNT+ will stop counting trackers at a certain point, simply when you click the add-on push, the tally wish increase by a couple of more cookies. When I was browsing on Marvel.com, for example, it told me that three trackers were in attendance; when I clicked the DNT+ button, the count went equal to five.

Ghostery

Unequal the AVG tool around and DNT+, Ghostery does not mechanically blank out cookies from tracking companies. Instead, it gives you options for which items to block, and when to do so.

Visit the Ghostery site and come home the green Download Ghostery for Free release. The site will automatically observe your browser type then that you undergo the correct supplement.

You can also rule Ghostery in PCWorld's Downloads library, atomic number 3 well as in the Chrome Web Store and connected the Firefox impart-on site.

Settings: By default, Ghostery but alerts you to cookies' presence. If you want to start block cookies, you essential enable the feature past clicking the Ghostery icon in your browser and then clicking the settings cog. Next, under 'Blocking Options', dawn Enable hemipteran blocking.

In the block out that comes up, you sack select the tracking cookies you want to block one by one, or you can choose to block them all by checking the box at the top of Ghostery's blocking list. Blocking all may be the easier option to starting with, since you likely bequeath want to allow only few specific cookies so much as Facebook operating theatre Google's +1. Merely you mightiness happen upon others as you browse, at which steer you'll need to modify the settings.

If you want help in making those custom selections, set 'General Options' and select the Show alert bubble command. Rightful like AVG's Do-Not-Pass over creature, Ghostery can get annoying really apace if it pops upward an alert bubble for every Web Sri Frederick Handley Page you visit, but you john make your choices and and so save them. One time you're finished with Ghostery's settings, dog the Save button at the rear of the page.

Browsing the Web: Ghostery works just as AVG and DNT+ DO, supplying a running tally of blocked trailing cookies. In my tests Ghostery was not rather American Samoa useful as DNT+, simply it was far better than AVG. As in AVG's interface, any trackers that Ghostery blocks induce a line drawn through their names.

Bottom line: Ghostery seems to work fairly well, but the DIY aspect of blocking individual trackers may put unsatisfactory some users.

Your Best Bet

In my tests, I found Abine's DNT+ to be superior to the other two tools, with Ghostery upcoming in a close second. I also liked the fact that DNT+ permits you to interact with a Web page's social elements when you choose to dress so. AVG antivirus users Crataegus oxycantha require to watch ove the keep company's Do-Non-Course sport to see whether AVG improves it over time. If you'rhenium non an AVG user, though, you'ray better off with DNT+.

Early Options

Connivance for Firefox and Mozilla's set-not-track cope: A far less robust approach to implementing do-not-track is to use Firefox's built-in do-not-get across header along with the organization's experimental Collusion add-on.

Collusion shows you on the nose which websites are tracking you, as well as the tracking cookies they set. Collusion privy't block anything; the add-on is simply an educational tool that illustrates how many tracking cookies are happening your computer.

One of the absorbing things about Connivance, however, is that it also reveals relationships between the sites you natter, using a shield-shaped graph. For example, whenever you natter sites carrying Google's DoubleClick trailing cookie, all of those sites in Collusion's graph will point to the DoubleClick cookie.

Mozilla's do-not-track header is a chip of code in your browser that tells websites that you don't want to be tracked, but IT's heavenward to individual websites to respect your privacy settings. The number of sites currently supporting Mozilla's do-not-track initiative is not clear.

Android users can activate do-non-track in Firefox for Humanoid away swiping toward the left on any Firefox yellow journalism and selecting the settings cog at the bottom right of the screen. Happening the following riddle, tap the checkbox next to Tell sites not to track me.

For Chrome and IE: Other browsers also have homegrown do-not-tag along features that you can try. Chromium-plate users bum download Google's Keep My Opt-Outs denotation, and Internet Explorer 9 users can address Microsoft's trailing protection lists.

Connect with Ian Paul (@ianpaul) on Chitter and Google+, and with Nowadays@PCWorld on Twitter for the latest tech word and analysis.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/469727/do_not_track_tools_hands_on_showdown.html

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