this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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Privacy

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[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 38 points 8 months ago (15 children)

What I wonder is... how?! A quick search shows that half of people in the USA use Chrome, another 30% Safari, 8% use Edge, and only 5% Firefox. This study was done by Ghostery so perhaps they chose a biased subset of the population? It just seems weird to me to think that more than half of average users use ad-blocking, these days.

[–] viking@infosec.pub 28 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (11 children)

My mom knows nothing about adblock, and is still blocking ads. You better believe all of the kids having to fix their relative's computers will set up some free antivirus and ad blocking right away.

Can't comment on the sample size though, Ghostery might indeed be somehow biased and measure devices where their software is installed vs. total number of internet users or something? But users of ghostery are more likely to be tech savvy, so there's a higher chance of them having more devices that are equally sanitized.

I'd have to dig through the study and see if the sampling mechanism is made public.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 5 points 8 months ago

Yes it is available. It in turn points to another site Censuswide, but does say:

The figures are representative of all US adults aged 16+

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