1590985 - about: protections show wrong date and number of blockings

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Protections UI, defect, P3)

Description

[Peter]

Attachment: Ghostery enabled note VK 2019-10-24 090920.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0

Steps to reproduce:

I viewed de Volkskrant online and paused my Ghostery add-on. I went to the Firefox address bar and clicked the Protection UI. It says: 4 blocked.

Actual results:

In the protections report is 4 listed under Sat(urday). Today it is however Thursday !
Kaspersky Labs reports much more blockings than 4. So also this number 4 is not right.

Expected results:

The number of blocks should have been listed under Thursday and I expect at least 11 blockings. I re-did a view with Ghostery add-on enabled and Ghostery says: 12 items blocked.

Comment 1

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

I believe it's quite expected for the numbers to not match, since each feature blocks based on different settings and lists.

I tried to replicate on a new profile, visiting the same website, and I get 26 elements blocked (25 cookies, 1 social). They are also reported in the correct day (marked as "today" in the graph).

Comment 2

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Can you provide more information on your system (language, date settings, etc.)?

It would also be interesting to understand if you can still see the issue with the date after a while.

Comment 3

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Just to clarify, add-ons or other software on your computer or network will block requests before Firefox does, so those blocks are not counted in the report. I'm really not sure about the date thing, but otherwise this is entirely expected.

Depending on the amount of confusion around this we might want to call that out in our UI in the future...

Comment 4

[Peter]

I disabled now the Ghostery add-on and allowed my internet security tool to let all trackers through. I revisited the Volkskrant site/page and checked the Firefox Protection page. I see now a number of 22 for Today (date is all right). I'm still confused by the count of the trackers, cookies, etc. In the Firefox address bar I come to 15 domains blocked .... not 22. Maybe there are more cookies/trackers per domain ??

I use the English (US) version of Mozilla Firefox. Time zone: Amsterdam

Comment 5

[Peter]

So the count is not correct in the Cross-Site Tracking Cookies and Content tracking area.

Comment 6

[Erica Wright [:ewright]]

The other cause of a mismatch in numbers is that the number of trackers is not recorded until the page is closed. Due to some technical issues this was the best way to implement it. So if you visit a page with blocked trackers on Tuesday, but close that tab on Wednesday the trackers will be recorded under Wednesday.

Comment 7

[Erica Wright [:ewright]]

Setting as P3 to remind us to double check if the numbers being recorded are correct, with the caveats mentioned above.