
Show HN: A browser extension I made appeared on 60 Minutes - byoogle
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/see-whos-watching-you-online/
======
yeukhon
Can someone familiar with Disconnect compare it with Collusion? Feature wise
what is missing in each?

[http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/](http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/lightbeam/)

~~~
byoogle
OP here. The differences between (and history of) these two extensions are a
bit confusing :-):

The parts of Disconnect that 60 Minutes showed actually started as a Chrome
(from Firefox) port of Collusion that I did for a hackathon
([https://blog.disconnect.me/collusion-for-
chrome](https://blog.disconnect.me/collusion-for-chrome)). Later, we updated
and integrated this code into Disconnect (there’s a “Visualize page” option in
Disconnect that brings up the graphical UI).

Mozilla has since made major updates to Collusion in the form of Lightbeam (a
Firefox add-on). The Disconnect graphs are now much more like to the original
Collusion and the Lightbeam graphs are brand new. But other than the visual
differences, Disconnect and Lightbeam are functionally alike (Disconnect is
also available on platforms other than Firefox: Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE,
iOS, and [sort of] Android).

------
akanster
FYI the entire segment can be seen here: [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-
data-brokers-selling-your-pe...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-data-brokers-
selling-your-personal-information/)

------
hrrsn
I don't have the extension, but I wonder how many trackers/beacons there are
on that CBS page.

~~~
sheetjs
Ghostery reports doubleclick, adsense, new relic, omniture, and visual revenue
(also adobe typekit, but not sure whether you consider that a tracker/beacon)

Disconnect reports new relic, "google", visual revenue

EDIT to clarify: The answer wasn't intended to suggest that Ghostery blocks
more or different ads/trackers compared to Disconnect. I just read off what
the blockers reported.

~~~
byoogle
It sounds like you’re running at least Disconnect and Ghostery at the same
time. You can’t do these comparisons with multiple filtering extensions
running at the same time and get apples-to-apples results because if one
extension blocks a request, other extensions don’t see the request (the
install order [browser dependent] determines which extension has first crack
at blocking).

With just Disconnect running (OP), I get this list (similar to AjithAntony):

facebook.com, plus.google.com, reddit.com, www.google.com, apis.google.com,
twitter.com, google-analytics.com, livefyre.com, facebook.net,
scorecardresearch.com, moatads.com, linkedin.com, doubleclick.net,
fonts.googleapis.com, googleusercontent.com, gstatic.com,
googletagservices.com, quantserve.com, youtube.com, ytimg.com,
googlesyndication.com, 2mdn.net, visualrevenue.com, imrworldwide.com,
conviva.com, lphbs.com, googleadservices.com, accounts.google.com,
typekit.net, ru4.com, clicktale.net, bkrtx.com, fyre.co, theplatform.com,
stumbleupon.com, securestudies.com, network-auth.com

------
phoney
Curious, what kind of traffic this drove?

~~~
byoogle
We seem to be getting about 100K extra hits per day (and still going) since
Sunday. (I have no idea if this is more or less traffic than one might
expect.)

------
higherpurpose
Congrats, but I wonder why they are doing this now. Are they trying to redeem
themselves for that NSA show sell-out? Because if they are, this won't cut it.

------
presty
congrats, but it's not like you haven't had $4M in funding :)

(btw, I'm a user since the early days)

