What's Best?

[Ted Myers]

Hello, on starting my Laptop, a popup from SuperAntiSpyWare Free Edition informed me, it's data base had not been updated for 5 days. On completion of update, I did a quick scan and it found 6 Adware Tracking Cookies, when fixed, another popup from Ccleaner. It found this:-

-

TM.png

????

[BobH]

Not to hijack Ted's thread, but his post reminds me that I don't know exactly what trackers are and how they work. As I understand it, they are bits of code that watch browser behavior (and perhaps other actions?) and somehow reveal to someone what that browser saw. As I understand it they are used to target advertising, primarily but might have other and even more sinister uses.

At any rate, I have Ghostery installed in my Firefox browser. It is supposed to find and stop trackers. I get a popup in the lower right corner of my browser display showing some entities with a line through them - presumably trackers stopped - and others displayed brightly.

The questions: Where can I find out more about trackers? Is Ghostery an effective tool for stopping them? Where can I learn more about entities reported without lines through them? Google, GoDaddy and Adobe names frequently pop up without lines through.

[Ted Myers]

Hello Bob, I use MS built in M S Anti Virus Defender, Ublock Origin & Avast Online Security. I have re ran Ccleaner after 10 hours and have only been using my pc for 10 minutes and there are 358 Trackers. Seems the best form of security is the Shut Down process. P.S. Only been on the lounge!

[stuck]

...another popup from Ccleaner. It found this:-
TM.png

I use Ccleaner regularly and I don't recognise that pop-up. Are you sure it is from Ccleaner?

Ken

[Ted Myers]

Hello Ken, I use the Health Check feature in Ccleaner

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TM.png

[stuck]

Oh, OK, I only ever use the Custom scan option.

Thanks,

Ken

[BobH]

I misspoke yesterday when I said that Ghostery was a tracker blocker. It is, in fact, a pop-up blocker. The information that appears from time to time on my screen is apparently the result of options set in Firefox. The pop-up is labeled "Trackers"; and to my knowledge, the only place I have anything dealing with trackers is in the Firefox Privacy & Security options.

Hope I didn't mislead anyone.