Today was the final straw. I was on Bank of America site, and trying to log into my online account. A second window came up asking for my cell number for protection by text/ and call. I clicked yes, and submit, but would not submit. I got on the phone with BA and lost 40 min of my day, --I'm self employed--and then thought: what about Ghostery? They are usually the culprit of 80% of online issues. And sure enough...

Reminds me of my recency decision to get rid of AV off my Mac. I'm done.

Ghostery has been a major problem all along.
And antivirus applications really don't have much application to Mac OS.
There's been a lot of previous discussion and advisories with respect to same in these forums.
So your choice is appropriate.

Thanks G,
I got Ghostery, because a few years ago I saw a slowness, and then learned about ads and internet etc, but man, what Ghostery puts you through with false positives I'm done.

I did remind me of my isp telling me to get AV Sophos and the grief Sophos cause and I posted about that here and finally bailed on that too.

Ghostery has never been a problem for me....ever.

Periodically on some media sites I will pause the blocking to read "Comments" and, as soon as I've seen as much as I want, I resume blocking.

On sites like banking or investments, where I don't expect the kind of things I'd otherwise want to block, I simply whitelist the sites.

Ryck, I had BA and Citi whitelisted, and this pop up still would not go away... Done, too much. And it never ends who you need to whitelist and what is the culprit.

I got rid of Ghostery and AdBlock Plus for similar reasons that were blocking access to all the features on the USAA web site. FWIW, I have installed AdGuard that works before anything gets to any browser on my system and it is working well. I discussed the issue with USAA and the las time I heard they were still attempting to locate the source of a problematic link on their site.

Your decision will certainly meet with the resounding approval of advertisers as discussed in the no more tin cup thread.

Thanks Joe, interesting thread.

So as I trust Joe M, I'll give Adguard a peek. Never heard of it, but man, Ghostery, just grueling.. done done...

No grief at all with Adgaurd? that's amazing, I'll give it a try. Any recommendations on preferences/ settings? and why does it not cause the grief others do? And does it help? Create a less slow internet experience for you?

MacNN going under, oh.. .love those folks there!

PS there is also an download ad guard for Mac that goes to your desktop,, any opinion on that?

I just watched FAce the Nation CBS and they asked to disable ad blocker, so I removed adguard, can't take that anymore.. too much work..

The version of AdGuard I use does not run in a browser. It filters all incoming internet traffic before it gets to any browser so it covers all the browsers on the computer. I have been running it for three or four weeks now and I have had zero problems. The only customizing I have done is turn all the filters ON.

My original problem that prompted me to change it turned ut cam from OpenDNS. It was triggered by an invalid security certificate so I was happy that it was blocked. A third party security service server used by my bank that had allowed the certificate to expire and had failed to renew. Neither the bank or the security service was aware of the expired certificate until it was caught by OpenDNS. That is why I have a paid OpenDNS account.

Yeah, me too 😢

Yes that is the one I am using and so far quite happy with.

Spend 37 minutes listening to the the blog grelber cited in Dinero's thread in The Lounge. Then make up your mind.

If you want to discuss advertising and/or financing the web further, please post in Dinero's thread so this thread can be confined to technical questions about the various blockers and blocking technology and not get bogged down in more philosophical matters.

Thanks Joe, ok I had the add-on in Firefox, will try stand alone; it downloaded as Adguard.release.dmg/ I assume that is it? Is it free?

Actually, I'm morally ok with it, so don't need to read the discussions. I have to watch commercial for CBS , CNBC etc, etc, etc, Hulu etc...no way around it. I put mute and walk back and unmute. Adblockers, I'm not even sure what they are doing, but without Ghostery etc, you have to wait 30 40 seconds sometimes for a page to load..

From what I see, Adguard is not only not free, but requires a yearly subscription. See this

Thanks Jon, I see that. ok, $20 would cover the desktop/ laptop I guess, not sure if they have a trial period. Not a horrible price if it really worked great....Any need to have this on iphone too?

I haven't used Adguard myself. I have been following this thread with interest but I don't know anything else. Explore the website and see what you find.

EDIT: The EULA may answer your question. It's hard to find because the link to it appears when you hover over the download link but disappears too quickly when you actually try to click on it.

Just started a support ticket, I thought it would not launch, but it's actually going, background app..., I'll ask them some questions...

See my edited post in case you missed it. Looks like we're playing forum tag!

Joe, I'm testing Adguard and am impressed. But after two weeks today I got my first indecent of a webpage saying blocked by Adguard blocker module, if you want to access this site, add it to exceptions -- blocked by filter rule.

I click Go back nothing happens. I click the ad guard word in red banner, goes to their site. I look in munulet, I don't see anything intuitive to add the site, so stuck, and this is not supposed to happen right? I thought it's outside of the browser..

The blocking is outside the browser, but like other utilities I have seen it is configured through a browser.

Thanks Joe, no, I'm outside the browser, so this was odd, no?

Truthfully I have not encountered the situation, so I don't know what to say.

No problem Joe, I have support ticket now, so let's see what they say. Do you use it also with smartphone?

Yes but on iOS it works more like a Safari extension. You install the Adguard app then in Settings ➡︎ Safari ➡︎ Content Blockers you allow it to interact with Safari.

That's interesting Joe, because I made a ticket with them asking if they could get it going with Firefox on the iphone, and they said no, only Safari. They did not describe it as you just did as an extension.

So, I just tested last night a webpage on the iphone with an annoying pop up, and the pop up did not appear with Firefox, yet it did appear with Safari! (which has adguard) Whats up with that?


(on the whole I very impressed with the desktop and laptop adguard and am leaning toward a lifetime subscription which at $65 seems like a good deal, as it's normally $25 yr, you concur?)

Actually it's about $80 or $90 lifetime, so bit annoying, another $100 gone...darn! do you think they will be around? Nothing at a better price out there- similar product? Are you going yearly or lifetime? Thanks Joe!

Update: I was almost going to get lifetime subscription, but the Hulu said I could not proceed because of Adblocker, and that is in addition to that other issue. I have a ticket with them. They are slow, and then they brought up doing filters. So it's like Ghostery light.. so probably will bail. OH well, worth try!