1882989 - Ads are partially shown at yahoo.com with ETP set to STRICT

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Privacy: Anti-Tracking, defect)

Description

[Raul Bucata]

Attachment: 20240301_121136.mp4

Environment:
Operating System: Windows 10 PRO x64
Firefox version: Firefox Nightly 125.0a1 (2024-02-29)

Preconditions:
ETP set to STRICT
Clean profile

Steps to reproduce:

1. Navigate to: https://www.yahoo.com/?guccounter=1
2. Accept the cookie policy.
3. Observe the ad placeholder on the page header.

Expected Behavior:
An empty placeholder is present

Actual Behavior:
The ad partially loads

Notes:

• Not reproducible with ETP STANDARD(Both Normal and Private Browsing)
• Reproducible on the latest build of Firefox Nightly and Release
• Screenrec attached
• Issue found during WebCompat team [Top100] websites testing

Comment 1

[Paul Zühlcke [:pbz]]

Thanks for the report!

ETP strict mode is not an ad blocker. We block some ads as a side effect of blocking trackers.
I can't reproduce this issue. Ads are not shown in ETP strict on Nightly.
For troubleshooting, could you please share the following:

• The list of trackers blocked according to the protections panel. You can get the origins by clicking on the tracker categories in the panel.
• A HAR file of the network load of the page:
  1. Open the network tab of the devtools
  2. Navigate to https://www.yahoo.com/?guccounter=1
  3. Once the page has fully loaded click on the cog icon on the top right of the network log and choose "Save all as HAR"

Note that the network recording may contain sensitive information like your IP address. You can share the file privately if you prefer.

Comment 2

[Raul Bucata]

Attachment: Screenshot_11.png

Comment 3

[Raul Bucata]

Attachment: www.yahoo.com_Archive [24-03-01 14-00-02].har

Comment 4

[Raul Bucata]

Hi Paul. For me, the ad is still partially loaded with ETP set to STRICT. It should either be missing altogether or an empty placeholder present. Not sure it is a valid ETP issue, just wanted to check. I have also attached the requested file.

Comment 5

[Paul Zühlcke [:pbz]]

Thanks!

When I load the page on my machine I can see that pagead2.googlesyndication.com gets blocked (in ETP strict). That might be why I don't see ads. However, looking at your request log there is no request to that domain.

Some requests get blocked due to tracking-protection, e.g. https://ups.analytics.yahoo.com, but others e.g. https://cdn.cmp.advertising.com/libraries/Espresso-1.7.7.js don't get blocked, even though that domain is on the tracking-protection blocklist. Tim, do you have an idea what's going on here or how we can troubleshoot this better? Without being able to reproduce locally it's hard for me to diagnose.

Comment 6

[Tim Huang[:timhuang] [PTO 10/19 ~ 11/3]]

It's because advertising.com is the same entity as yahoo.com. So, we don't block advertising.com trackers if they are loaded by yahoo.com.

Comment 7

[Paul Zühlcke [:pbz]]

Thanks Tim! With that sorted out I don't see any other unexpected behavior here in terms of network load. It might be that they use different ad networks in different regions and that's why I don't see the same results as Raul. Partially loading an ad isn't problematic as-is as long as we enforce our block-list properly.
I'm closing this for now but please do reopen if you notice issues with ETP.