Ghostery Rewards launches in Germany
Ghostery published an update to the popular anti-tracking and ad-blocking solution in early July 2018 that is available for browsers such as Firefox or Chrome.
Ghostery 8.2 introduces an updated user interface and experience, and the new Ghostery Rewards feature. Ghostery Rewards was announced back in March 2018 as an opt-in system to highlight relevant deals to users based on their browsing activity.
Ghostery released the source code of the extension at the same time to improve transparency and user trust in the company's solution.
Ghostery Rewards
Ghostery Rewards is only available in Germany right now but the company plans to bring the feature to users in other regions including the United States in the near future.
Ghostery displays "new reward discovered" if "a set of action triggers that indicate [..] active interest in making a purchase" is discovered.
A coupon code is displayed when you activate the button. It is unclear whether you will always get a coupon code or if other offers will be presented to you as well.
The reward was triggered in Chrome while browsing the German Media Markt website. It displays a coupon code for Cyberport, another large German retailer.
One thing that is interesting about this is that Cyberport is owned by Hubert Burda Media, a German media group which is one of the largest in Germany. Hubert Burda Media majority-owns Cliqz, and Cliqz acquired Ghostery in February 2017.
Ghostery comes preloaded with all rewards. The software does not transmit personal information to Ghostery, Cliqz, or third-parties, and Ghostery states that it does not collect, process, or store data centrally on a server. It states furthermore that it does not profile users or share user data with anyone.
Ghostery Rewards operates locally, meaning it is completely contained within your browser and does not transmit personal information back to Ghostery, Cliqz, or any other third party companies.
Ghostery Rewards is powered by MyOffrz which is operated by Cliqz MyOffrz GMBH, a Cliqz subsidiary.
Manage Ghostery Rewards
Ghostery displays a setup prompt to users after installation. Users can select between one-click setup which makes all decisions for the user or a custom setup which gives users full control.
The option to participate in Ghostery Rewards and the sharing of analytics is checked by default. Users can disable these in the settings after the initial setup (or enable them).
Do the following to change the functionality:
- Activate the Ghostery icon in the browser's toolbar.
- Select the menu icon.
- Select settings when the menu opens.
- Go to opt-in.
There you have three options:
- Sharing extension usage analytics.
- Sharing Human Web data.
- Participating in Ghostery Rewards.
You can turn any of the options on or off individually.
Closing words
Ghostery Rewards cannot be compared to price comparison extensions at this point in time. The offers, at least those that were displayed to me while using the extension, seem to be limited to displaying coupon codes to users that are not necessarily for the shopping site users are on.
Whether that is useful depends on individual users. The implementation appears to value user privacy by keeping things in the local browser which is good and the right decision for an extension that promises to improve user privacy on the Internet. (via Caschy)
Now You: What is your take on Ghostery Rewards?
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.