269500 - msn.com - advertising - blocks Firefox but not Mozilla

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

All pages on http://advertising.msn.com/ deny access to Firefox and ask the user
to "upgrade" to Microsoft Internet Explorer.  All pages can be accessed in
Firefox (and appear to display as Microsoft intended) if one changes ones UA
string (product token) sent over HTTP to Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0;
Windows NT 5.1) .

(This is clearly a very evil attempt by Microsoft to deny themselves advertising
revenue, therefore we must feel sorry for them and evangelise to them to ensure
that MSN makes less losses for Microsoft than it has been in the past.)

This bug was discovered by oak at
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=161865 .

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
Go to http://advertising.msn.com/

Actual Results:  
The page redirects to http://advertising.msn.com/global/oldbrowser.asp which
says "Please Upgrade Your Browser...Click here to find the latest free browser
from Microsoft".

Expected Results:  
Microsoft should not redirect Firefox users to
http://advertising.msn.com/global/oldbrowser.asp as the pages display fine in
Firefox (when the UA product token is spoofed).

Comment 1

[Felix Miata]

Conforming summary to TFM item 10 at 
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tech-evangelism/site/procedures.html#file-new

Reporter, when you file a TE bug, please follow the reporting guidelines.

Clicking subject URL takes me to http://advertising.msn.com/home/home.asp in
OS/2 trunk and Linux trunk.

Comment 2

[Felix Miata]

I tried FF 1.0 & Moz 1.7.3 on W98SE and FF 1.0 on OS/2. Only FF is blocked.

Comment 3

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

It seems they've reconsidered, and are now willing to take money from Firefox
users. Now if only we had any...

WFM, FF 1.0.

Comment 4

[Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley]

Still doesn't WFM on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0 (official binaries, fresh install).

Comment 5

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

This WFM with Firefox.

Reporter, please update. Do you still see this bug?