But if you're using a browser for its privacy, you probably aren't enabling prediction anyway, since that usually requires sending your search queries to Google or Bing for analysis. The browser also lacks typing prediction, so its navigation suggestions are restricted to your history. In fact, we usually couldn't zoom in on text at all. Unfortunately, Ghostery doesn't let you hide the address bar, and it doesn't reflow text (resizing paragraphs of text to fit on your screen when you zoom in). Interface is hit-or-miss: Given the limited screen space of a mobile browser, we'd like to be able to hide app elements that aren't necessary when browsing a website. Since Google Play Store classifies this app within the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 downloads, this lack of external access to the statement is unfortunate and troubling. The product page on the Google Play Store links to a landing page on Ghostery's website that contains several legal documents, none of which are the statement in question. We could not find a Privacy Statement specific to the mobile browser anywhere on Ghostery's website, or elsewhere on the Internet. The document is integrated within the browser rather than being a webpage, so you can't bookmark it, share it, or copy a URL to use somewhere else. Then you tap the three buttons in the upper right to open the browser settings, tap the gear icon, tap the About tab, scroll down to Privacy Statement, then tap that to read the statement. First you have to decide whether to opt in to data collection. The privacy statement is elusive: The statement is not provided or linked to on the page where you decide whether or not to opt in to Ghostery's data-sharing partnerships. The complete version of the cut-off sentence reads, "To find out more about how we use data please visit our privacy statement." If you tap it, you'll get the full paragraph, which on our 2560 x 1440 screen had plenty of room to fit the extra lines to begin with. But if you want details on the data collection, the location of that information is obscured: When you view the browser in portrait mode, the text explaining the data sharing is cut off. This is how the company makes money to develop its browser. If you don't opt out, Ghostery will share your usage data with Crashlytics (owned by Twitter) and Flurry (owned by Yahoo). Ghostery wants to collect your usage data: This seems like an odd decision for a browser that's marketed as private. With Ghostery, the browser just switches from a light theme to a dark theme. So anyone glancing over your shoulder can tell when you're using it. In Chrome, when you switch to incognito mode, an icon shows up in the Android status bar at the top of the device's screen, to the left of the address bar. Ghost Mode (aka incognito or private mode) does not give itself away: Incognito mode makes a browser stop storing cookies and your search history. In our informal testing, the Android version of Ghostery appeared to block as well as the desktop version. Visually, it's barely different: You get the familiar icon to the right of the address bar that counts off how many things it's blocking, and you can tap that icon to add the website to your whitelist or to stop blocking particular ads. Ghostery's ad blocker performs as you would expect: If you've used the desktop version of the Ghostery ad blocker ( Chrome, Firefox), you'll be at home in Ghostery Privacy Browser. But by putting "Privacy" in the name of the app, Ghostery is aiming for a high standard that it doesn't meet as consistently as other browsers like Firefox or Orfox do. This is an advantage, because Google Chrome - by far the most popular browser on Android - does not allow extensions. Ghostery Privacy Browser comes with the popular Ghostery ad blocker extension built in.
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