Leaving Tom's Hardware

[jkhoward]

Hello Fellow Tom's Community,

I am sad to say that I will no longer be posting on the forums due to an issue I have been having with Tom's website lately. Tom's has been preventing me from posting on the forums do to an add-on that I have installed on my web browser that prevents marketing companies from tracking my search habits. I will not support a company that doesn't support user privacy. I had a great time while at Tom's and I wish everyone in the community the best.

I apologize if this was placed in the wrong forum.

Thank you,
Joel

 

[Titillating]

That's unfortunate to hear. What you're talking about is likely Distil and the issues that it runs into with Ghostery. It's not there to track your search habits, but rather in order to protect the forums from bots, spammers, and crawlers that bring our servers to a crawl.

It's sad to lose a community member over something like this, but that's just the way things are. User privacy is something we value a lot, but ultimately, the greater good of the forum community must come first. I wish you the best and hope that one day, you'll change your mind and return


Best,
Kevin Ng
Assistant Community Manager, Tom's Hardware / Tom's Guide

 

[Someone Somewhere]

It's worth noting that you can disable Distil in Ghostery without disabling it altogether.

 

[jkhoward]

That's unfortunate to hear. What you're talking about is likely Distil and the issues that it runs into with Ghostery. It's not there to track your search habits, but rather in order to protect the forums from bots, spammers, and crawlers that bring our servers to a crawl.

It's sad to lose a community member over something like this, but that's just the way things are. User privacy is something we value a lot, but ultimately, the greater good of the forum community must come first. I wish you the best and hope that one day, you'll change your mind and return


Best,
Kevin Ng
Assistant Community Manager, Tom's Hardware / Tom's Guide

I have returned. Not sure if something changed but I haven't ran into this issue and I am still running Ghostery. Hopefully it doesn't come back...