Ghostery is aimed at the paranoid among us. It's designed to inform a user about the trackers that are following her as she browses a site. What it does well is provide an unobtrusive set of notifications and graphics about the technologies working behind the scenes to show ads, track clicks, integrate social media, and monitor the site's engagement. Honestly, without it I would have no clue by whom (and where) I'm being tracked. Even beyond that, though, it gives you easy, custom control over which trackers to trust and when. I can tell it to block a tracker on a single site, or multiple ones. I could even go dark, blocking all of the trackers Ghostery knows of and any new ones it finds.

But as much as it informs and reassures, a few things do trouble me. Given that it is an add-on aimed at security, I was expecting that the full functionality would be available without any registration. Unfortunately, some of Ghostery's advanced features are hidden behind a login wall (albeit a free one). More to the point, the add-on comes with "page and tracker data" sharing automatically enabled, rather than defaulting to privacy and letting users freely consent to that sharing. I'm sure I'm not alone in worrying what the folks at Ghostery are doing with that data.

For better or for worse, this add-on will open your eyes about the zoo of data-hungry trackers following your every click.