A very nice friend recommended I try out Ghostery for my iPad to avoid tracking and ads. It seems to speed things up quite a bit, particularly when using Mifi connections.

It's free, so may be worth a shot. You go to your settings->wifi and set auto proxy, getting the address from the Ghostery app.

Unfortunately, it seems like you have to set this up for every wifi connection.

I'll let you know how it continues to work. It's nice not to get stalled by ads loading.

ETA: after using this a couple of days, it really makes a big speed difference on the iPad.

A couple of FTers suggested using the Ghostery add on to help block tracking and other crap while surfing the web, so I tried it.

Wow - it is great. I use Firefox, and downloaded Ghostery from Mozilla, and it has speeded up things appreciably, especially when using my 3G MiFi. Ghostery blocks all sorts of ads and trackers, including crap like Disqus which was always slowing things down for me. I can now usually stream video that I want even on the 3G connection, which really didn't work great before. I find that my Mifi disconnects less often. And it's nice to know that I am being tracked less often. You'd be amazed how much tracking crap it blocks, especially on "news" websites.

I suspect this would help speed up surfing with sketchy onboard wifi, too.

If you download it, you can opt out of automatic anonymous reporting of which items are blocked, and I did that.

It is available for FF and Chrome on computers.

The other amazing aspect is its effect on surfing using an iPad. For that purpose, you download the free app from the iStore, get the address of a proxy server for wifi use, and then can surf ad free on iPad using the Chrome browser. The salutary effects on speed there are even more noticeable. Finally, an ....... equivalent for iPad.

Cheers,

Doc

Another happy user here. I have it on a few desktops and it operates nicely in the background.

Anyone used this after working with ......./FlashBlock/DoNotTrackMe that can compare the two approaches?

I'm using it WITH ....... and just added Flashblock as well.

All of the above here. I use ....... and Ghostery, and just added Privacy Badger from EFF to stop this new canvas nonsense. I know Chrome is a memory hog to begin with, but with 16GB on my Retina, I don't mind the overhead.

How does this work on ipads? I've used it for several years on Chrome and FF, but didn't know they started an ipad version. Sort of wondering how that would even work?

I'm using it with ....... (Plus, and some added lists), Ghostery, and a hosts file. Seems to work well.

The setting the built-in flash support to require permission seemed to be adequate now, so I haven't run FlashBlock in a while.

(I used to use NoScript, but found it a little too intrusive, and didn't particularly like the author's attitude in his online presence.)