1594307 - Protection UI empty when ETP is turned on alongside with adblockers/privacy extensions, confusing the user

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Protections UI, defect, P3)

Description

[Mithesh]

Attachment: Annotation 2019-11-06 1139s34.png

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

Steps to reproduce:

ETP report is always zero. "Firefox blocked 0 trackers over the past week"
The protection level is set to strict. and i have been using firefox for a long time. and since the day ETP arrived a few months back, it is constantly zero.
I use other Ad blockers too, Privacy Badger and Ublock origin. Those work well. But ETP does not work.
I tried changing the protection level to custom and set the browser to remember history. That didn't help. Tried using custom protection too for ETP.

Actual results:

Nothing seems to work. i have tried all the options that i know off including completely uninstalling firefox, deleting App data, cleaning registry and reinstalled it. But the issue seems to persist.

Expected results:

ETP should have been working as other protection add-ons work well.

Comment 1

[Erica Wright [:ewright]]

Hi Mithesh,
If you are using Privacy Badger and Ublock origin, likely what is happening is that they are blocking the trackers first, before Firefox has a chance to block them. If you'd like to test this, try disabling your adblockers for a short time and visit a few websites, then check your report at about:protections or look in the privacy panel attached to the shield you noted. Keep in mind that we record the number of trackers/cookies on a page at unload, so the numbers will not update until you close the tab or navigate away.
After trying those things could you report back here and let us know if there is still a bug?
@epang, perhaps we should consider offering this explanation on the about:protection page, or if the user has a 0 value in their panel, offer an explanation on hover?

Comment 2

[Mithesh]

Hi Erica,

I assumed that, the ETP would work in conjunction with the other extensions. At least, say ETP doesn't work if other add-ons are used, at least Firefox should include it in the report. Because there are other add-ons which work together, show number of trackers blocked or blocked certain ads. For ex. the adblock plus and ublock does work together. they both block trackers from the same page/website. I think Firefox should do the same. At least we have the option to keep ETP switched on and use other extensions together, so that ETP can pick up/block the ones which weren't blocked by the third party extensions or the other way around.

As said, I will try to use without using any other add-ons and revert soon.

Comment 3

[Erica Wright [:ewright]]

(In reply to Mithesh from comment #2)

I assumed that, the ETP would work in conjunction with the other extensions. At least, say ETP doesn't work if other add-ons are used, at least Firefox should include it in the report. Because there are other add-ons which work together, show number of trackers blocked or blocked certain ads. For ex. the adblock plus and ublock does work together. they both block trackers from the same page/website. I think Firefox should do the same. At least we have the option to keep ETP switched on and use other extensions together, so that ETP can pick up/block the ones which weren't blocked by the third party extensions or the other way around.

Firefox can't claim to block a tracker which was actually blocked by the other addons. But if your other addons miss a tracker and allow it through, and it is on our blocklist then Firefox would catch it, so it does indeed work with other blockers. I'm assuming that your addons have not allowed through a tracker which is also on our list, your addons are likely doing a good job.

Comment 4

[Mithesh]

Attachment: All the websites that have some kind of tracker or ads.

Comment 5

[Mithesh]

Attachment: Trackers blocked

Comment 6

[Mithesh]

Attachment: Report shows zero

Comment 7

[Mithesh]

Hi,

I did try as per your advice. The ETP works now. But the report still shows zero. I have added some screenshots. The report screenshot is after i have closed all the tabs with trackers and closed and reopened firefox again.