1465962 - Stat counter is not show with ETP set to STRICT

Status: NEW

(Web Compatibility :: Privacy: Site Reports, defect, P3)

Description

[Patrick Tillery]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0
Build ID: 20180516032328

Steps to reproduce:

Problem area http://KilroyWasHere.org (recently moved to a new host
Firefox is up to date.
manually disabled all add-ons and extensions — No success
safe mode (Restart with add-ons disabled) Counter returns but with no add-ons but     cannot remove them (see above)



Actual results:

safe mode (Restart with add-ons disabled) Counter returns but with no add-ons but     cannot remove them (see above)



Expected results:

I hoped that manually disabling all add-ons the problem would go away so I could start eliminating add-ons.
I checked other versions and the same. In one of my own v59.0.3 32bit (in a 64bit computer) the counter is showing but as a blue link.

Comment 1

[Patrick Tillery]

Under description above should read: safe mode (Restart with add-ons disabled) Counter returns but with no add-ons — cannot remove them manually (see above)

Under 
Actual results:
safe mode (Restart with add-ons disabled) Counter returns but with no add-ons — cannot remove them (see above)

Comment 2

[Patrick Tillery]

Thank you!

Comment 3

[Marion Daly [:mdaly]]

(In reply to Patrick Tillery from comment #2)
> Thank you!

Is this issue still present for you?

Comment 4

[Patrick Tillery]

Yes. I am awaiting other comments from other users but my version of Firefox is still 60.0.2. The counter is about halfway down the first page in  a small black frame. It says only:

"Visitors since
 June 6, 2000"

There should be a number almost reaching 5,000,000 (may have gone over by now) and 

a blue and white InLive box saying "1 Visitor on the site" Obviously the 1 could be any number.

I can't seem to insert an image here but you can see what it should look like on MS Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. It is also visible in an old version of Firefox V59.0.03. It keeps offering to upgrade but I have saved this for you.

Thank you for your help.

Comment 5

[Andrew Overholt [:overholt]]

Tracking Protection seems to block the counter from statcounter.

Comment 6

[Patrick Tillery]

Is that for me? Should I take some action? What is Tracking Protection?

Comment 7

[Sergiu Logigan [:sergiu]]

I have noticed that on Google Chrome, with uBlock Origin installed and Enabled, the counter is not displayed.
http://prntscr.com/k8tjo5
After disabling uBlock Origin, the counter is displayed (4994889).

On Firefox Nightly 63, with no add-ons (clean profile), the counter is displayed, but when enabling basic Tracking Protection, the counter is no longer displayed.
http://prntscr.com/k8tlnk

Comment 8

[Sergiu Logigan [:sergiu]]

This is related to `trackingprotection` breakage #1101005

Looking at the devtools console, here are the blocked resources:

The resource at “http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js” was blocked because tracking protection is enabled.
The resource at “http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js” was blocked because tracking protection is enabled.
The resource at “http://www2.addfreestats.com/cgi-bin/countnow.cgi?usr=00222085&type=0” was blocked because tracking protection is enabled.
The resource at “http://edge.quantserve.com/quant.js” was blocked because tracking protection is enabled.

So these are the domains to test:

www.google-analytics.com
www.statcounter.com
www2.addfreestats.com
edge.quantserve.com

I opened the URL in a fresh browser profile (Firefox Nightly 63, uMatrix installed, normal mode) and loaded the page. The page loaded correctly. Images are displayed.

I disabled the Spoof Referrer option in uMatrix and then *WHITELISTED*:

www.statcounter.com

After this, the counter became visible.
The other resources (www.google-analytics.com, www2.addfreestats.com, edge.quantserve.com) didn't help.

http://prntscr.com/k8tovv

statcounter.com can be found in disconnect-blacklist.json and disconnect-entitylist.json

So in conclusion:

statcounter.com - Analytics = [tp-analytics]

Comment 9

[Youssef]

I am not able to reproduce this. Should we close it?

Comment 10

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

Short of allowing this type of tracking by permitting http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js to load, I'm not sure what we can do about this. The page is providing their own custom HTML markup for the visitor-count box which does not seem to be a copy-and-paste job, while the statcounter script just renders the number itself. As such if we wanted to remove these visitor count indicators on pages, we would need site-specific fixes, which is a lot of work for marginal benefit. I suppose we could shim the script to provide a number or special "blocked by tracking protection" message instead, but even that feels unlikely to be worth the effort compared to fixing other breakage.

Comment 11

[Oana Arbuzov [:oanaarbuzov]]

The issue is not reproducible with ETP - Standard (https://prnt.sc/w39p1z), but still occurs with ETP - Strict (https://prnt.sc/w39oky).

Tested with:
Browser / Version: Firefox Nightly 86.0a1 (2020-12-14)
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro

Comment 12

[Raul Bucata]

The issue seems to be a perfect candidate for Tracking Protection, as now the counter is not visible with ETP set to STANDARD:
https://prnt.sc/W4i7RUH_HFgE

But is visible with ETP set to OFF:
https://prnt.sc/lu19h54ZdQ0y

Tested with:

Browser / Version: Firefox Nightly 101.0a1 (2022-04-11) (64-bit)
Operating System: Windows 10 PRO x64

Moving this to the right component and product.

Comment 13

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

It appears that this is actually still a strict-only issue. I just checked in Chrome, and also don't see the statcounter indicator there. So either their script is presently broken, or this specific site has broken.

Comment 14

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.

Comment 15

[Suhaib Mujahid [:suhaib]]

Sorry, there was a problem with the detection of inactive users. I'm reverting the change.