Rec: Ghostery Content Blocker

Ghostery is like a next-level adblocker. It's an extension for your browser that can block not just visible ads, but all of the trackers and plug-ins that litter modern websites. Why would you want to do this?

1) Privacy: Pretty much every website on the internet is spying on you, often in sophisticated networks that follow you around the web. Ghostry helps shield you from these tracker networks.

2) Security: Some website plugins carry malware that can do you active harm.

3) Speed: A major portion of the data load of a lot of websites is in trackers and plugins. It's amazing how fast some of these sites load when you cut that crap out.

4) Clutter: Ghostery removes a lot of the extra cruft from websites that can distract from the content. Not just ads, but things like those social media sharing buttons, media players, and buggy, slow-loading comment sections. Now, some of these things are useful, but Ghostery lets you turn them on and off at will. Maybe you want the Facebook share buttons but not the Twitter or Linked in ones--you can do that. Maybe most of the time you just want to read a site's articles but sometimes you want to comment--you can load them only when you want to.

5) And it blocks ads too.


( Some notes on using it: )