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Comment by malchow | Hacker News Reader

I am always surprised that ad block users do not also refuse to use smartphones.

If you ask me, I'd rather Amazon retarget a bag of chips at me via a 300x250 display ad than Verizon sell my location breadcrumbs to some unknown entity.

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Even more amazing to me is Surveymonkey's Contribute Plugin [1] - where you voluntarily run all your mobile device's traffic through their VPN and they analyze your browsing and app use... (and I tend to like SM as a company, but I can't even imagine agreeing to that).

"The Contribute Plug-in enables your iOS device to use our free VPN service that helps to secure your mobile data. In exchange for providing you with this free service, we collect and analyze some of your mobile data that passes through our VPN to gain insights and understand how consumers like you use mobile apps and mobile devices. We may also combine profile data from your Contribute account with your mobile data."

1: http://help.surveymonkey.com/articles/en_US/kb/SurveyMonkey-...

What in god's name does doing this service have to do with SM's core business?

Lets not forget who SM was tightly leaning in with...

/tinfoil

You can't see a connection between marketing research and browsing habits?

I cant see WHY I would want a survey company to also be my browsing VPN -- and then also telling me they will be mining my habits..

I cant make the connection as to why I, as a user, would ever want to use that service from them....

Ah, I see. I misread your comment then. I'm not familiar with SM's product, but there is a high chance they are incentivizing participation.

edit: Yes, this seems to be the case:

"You can install the Contribute Plug-in on an iOS device (US only) to increase your contribution to participating charities from $0.50 to $1.00 each time you take a survey."

I'd say the opposite. The bag of chips display ad is annoying, ugly, and slows down whatever I'm trying to do on the web.

The location breadcrumbs ... well, it's not that I really want those shared. But at least it happens entirely in the background. I'm not even sure I care that much, given that I never even see the precision ad it theorectically enables.

upvote. I don't agree with you, but I don't think you deserve downvotes for what you are saying.

Adblocking is available on mobile platforms.

Ghostery browser FTW.

I have bad news for you, Ghosterys privacy policy and T&C allows them to sell data about your browsing activity to third parties.

I'll link them here once I get home and off my throttled connection.

If you're talking about Ghostrank than that's totally opt-in. If you're not then I'll need to see some evidence of this because their privacy policy mentions nothing about selling browsing habits: https://www.ghostery.com/about-us/privacy-statements/ghoster...

It seems you are correct. However I remember having removed Ghostery from all of my Computers after reading their privacy policy. The current version looks to be fine.

http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actuall...

As the article you linked to mentions, GhostRank is opt-in, and I am always careful to never opt in to it.

Carriers have been known to add unblockable identifiers to your mobile traffic, and sell that data.

Not really available on Android. Google is using the "not interfering with other apps" excuse to ban all adblockers from the store.

Ghosted has a _web browser_ for Android. Works great on 5.1.1.

$!#/# AutoCorrect... Ghostery has...

> Not really available on Android. Google is using the "not interfering with other apps" excuse to ban all adblockers from the store.

Good thing Android isn't iOS and you can install whatever the hell you want, whether it's on the Play Store or not.

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