One of the best adblockers on the market has just opened up its tracking library to enable the public to help build a more private browsing experience for all.
Blocking and filtering online trackers since 2009, Ghostery was already used to collaborating with external experts to feed its database. Now, the team decided to make this process more transparent and accessible by the broader online community.
TrackerDB is now open-source and fully available on GitHub. The firm aims to disseminate the knowledge on how the tracking ecosystem works, through a community-driven approach.
Ghostery TrackerDB
“TrackerDB has always been at the heart of Ghostery. This is the proprietary database which we use to name trackers,” Krzysztof Modras, Director of product and engineering at Ghostery, told TechRadar.
Ghostery uses this database to manage categories that help identify web trackers or other annoyances to tell users exactly what they are and who they belong to. The database is managed by the Ghostery team and some external contributors who reach out directly to the service.
“The key difference is that we used to make those choices behind closed doors in the past, now we make them in public,” said Modras. “So, anyone can see what’s the rational and what’s the goal. We make this transparent.”
This commitment to transparency is also extended to the companies whose trackers might get blocked as they will need to dispute these decisions publicly, too.