1700918 - Some Washington Post pages don't recognize that I'm logged in

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[bugzilldg [:bugzilldg]]

Attachment: Post overlay 20210325.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:86.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/86.0

Steps to reproduce:

Visited certain Washington Post web pages while logged into their site. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bidens-trumanesque-foreign-policy/2021/03/23/ed46fad4-8c05-11eb-a6bd-0eb91c03305a_story.html as an example today

Actual results:

Article renders unreadable, overlaid with "Subscribe to continue reading. Already a subscriber? Sign in
Try one month for $1
You can cancel anytime."

Expected results:

I'm a paid subscriber. I should be able to read the article without the overlay. (Logging out, clearing cache/cookies, logging back in does not help - article reads fine logged in using another browser).

Comment 1

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

With the amount of information provided, I would like to ask your assistance to confirm that is not something caused by something amiss in your profile (possible installed addons?).
So, in order to check this, can you please install the same firefox version but in a different disk drive location (starting this version will cause the creation of a new profile, without affecting your existing one). Start up that newly installed version, login to Washington Post and please report if the problem is reproducible. If the problem doesn't reproduces on the clean profile (from the different location firefox), that means most likely one of your addons is the culprit, so disable your addons one by one and retest the issue.

Comment 2

[Jeronimo Torti (Please send NI request to Brindusa Tot)]

Hi bugzilldg,
I'm marking this as Resolved-Incomplete due to lack of response. If the issue is still reproducible with the latest Firefox version, feel free to reopen the bug with more information.

Regards,
Jerónimo.

Comment 3

[bugzilldg [:bugzilldg]]

(In reply to Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu] from comment #1)

With the amount of information provided, I would like to ask your assistance to confirm that is not something caused by something amiss in your profile (possible installed addons?).
So, in order to check this, can you please install the same firefox version but in a different disk drive location (starting this version will cause the creation of a new profile, without affecting your existing one). Start up that newly installed version, login to Washington Post and please report if the problem is reproducible. If the problem doesn't reproduces on the clean profile (from the different location firefox), that means most likely one of your addons is the culprit, so disable your addons one by one and retest the issue.

I apologize for not responding to this. The problem persists in multiple forms, but netted out, even in FF 89.0, I cannot access some Washington Post web pages, even when logged in.

Can you explain how to install Firefox in a different disk drive location? Is this possible without having different HD partitions?

Comment 4

[bugzilldg [:bugzilldg]]

(In reply to bugzilldg from comment #3)

(In reply to Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu] from comment #1)

With the amount of information provided, I would like to ask your assistance to confirm that is not something caused by something amiss in your profile (possible installed addons?).
So, in order to check this, can you please install the same firefox version but in a different disk drive location (starting this version will cause the creation of a new profile, without affecting your existing one). Start up that newly installed version, login to Washington Post and please report if the problem is reproducible. If the problem doesn't reproduces on the clean profile (from the different location firefox), that means most likely one of your addons is the culprit, so disable your addons one by one and retest the issue.

I apologize for not responding to this. The problem persists in multiple forms, but netted out, even in FF 89.0, I cannot access some Washington Post web pages, even when logged in.

Can you explain how to install Firefox in a different disk drive location? Is this possible without having different HD partitions?

Apologies, I used the info at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2249039 to install a portable 89.0 on my computer, and ran this, and was able to load 20+ stories from washingtonpost.com without being blocked. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/06/apple-app-store-scams-fraud/ is one story that I cannot access on my primary FF 89.0, but can on the portable.

I do use Adblock Plus on my primary, but that is not the problem. Even disabling it for washingtonpost.com certain stories block my access as described in the orignal post.

But thanks to your great suggestion, that I'm much too late in trying, I've now noticed that a FF without extensions or add-ons, or other "baggage" from my normal configuration, works fine for Washington Post articles

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/06/apple-app-store-scams-fraud/

Comment 5

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

Thank you for the time invested into debugging this. At least we know now that something in the profile is causing this. If you are able to invest a bit more time into this, it would be great if you could debug your said profile configuration on another new profile, one by one settings, identifying which of your main profile configuration is causing this.

P.S. You don't need to put it on portable. In order to create and use a new profile, just install a 2nd Firefox in a different drive location or use the -p argument to start with profile manager.

Comment 6

[bugzilldg [:bugzilldg]]

(In reply to Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu] from comment #5)

Thank you for the time invested into debugging this. At least we know now that something in the profile is causing this. If you are able to invest a bit more time into this, it would be great if you could debug your said profile configuration on another new profile, one by one settings, identifying which of your main profile configuration is causing this.

P.S. You don't need to put it on portable. In order to create and use a new profile, just install a 2nd Firefox in a different drive location or use the -p argument to start with profile manager.

I'll take a poke at this this week. What's a good systematic way to do this? I am guessing I have around 30 "non-standard" settings, between extensions, or non-default about:config settings. How do I easily find the "deviations from the norm" to systematically introduce them? And what's a good general methodology for which to introduce first?

Comment 7

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

(In reply to bugzilldg from comment #6)

(In reply to Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu] from comment #5)

Thank you for the time invested into debugging this. At least we know now that something in the profile is causing this. If you are able to invest a bit more time into this, it would be great if you could debug your said profile configuration on another new profile, one by one settings, identifying which of your main profile configuration is causing this.

P.S. You don't need to put it on portable. In order to create and use a new profile, just install a 2nd Firefox in a different drive location or use the -p argument to start with profile manager.

I'll take a poke at this this week. What's a good systematic way to do this? I am guessing I have around 30 "non-standard" settings, between extensions, or non-default about:config settings. How do I easily find the "deviations from the norm" to systematically introduce them? And what's a good general methodology for which to introduce first?

That's a tough one. I don't really have a recipe for succes, but my guess is that you should start with the extensions. I think something related to cookies, history or both might be the cause for the reported behavior, so you might want to start with anything related to that.