387424 - Omnibus ad-blocking bug for July/August 2007

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Camino Graveyard :: Annoyance Blocking, defect)

Description

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Comment 1

[philippe (part-time)]

On http://www.yahoo.co.jp/ (incluing search.yahoo.jp)
img ads: img[src*="/ai.yimg.jp/"]
flash ads: embed[src*="/ai.yimg.jp/"]

There are still some text links left to hide, all have a[href*="/ard.yahoo.co.jp/"], but I'm not yet confident about this one.

Comment 3

[Stuart Morgan]

From the dup:
-div[id*="AdBlock"]
+div#AdBlock

We need to start being a lot more critical of using wildcard on classes and ids, as we've caught partial words a few times now.

Comment 4

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

They've almost all been classes/ids of somethingAdSomethingelse; I had started using ^ad where possible instead of *ad, but obviously not back in April.

I'll audit the list this month and see if there are others that also need tweaking.

Comment 5

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

On the Drudge Report:

<!-- START: DrudgeReport.com: Dynamic Banner (728x90); Ads Managed By: Intermarkets.net -->
<center><script type="text/javascript" src="http://harvest176.adgardener.com/flowerPot.aspx?c=F39CBA59-BB6E-488D-B579-215CF4BBEB9B"></script>
<noscript><a href="http://harvest.AdGardener.com/noscript.aspx?s=1&c=F39CBA59-BB6E-488D-B579-215CF4BBEB9B" target="_blank"><img src="http://harvest.AdGardener.com/noscript.aspx?s=1&w=728&h=90&c=F39CBA59-BB6E-488D-B579-215CF4BBEB9B" width="728" height="90" border="0" /></a></noscript><br>
<font size=-5>Support The DrudgeReport; Visit Our Advertisers</font></center>
<!-- END: Powered By: AdGardener.com -->

is spitting out a Flash ad that's sneaking by our built-in ad-blocker.

<!-- BEGIN NetShelter Ad Tag for MacRumors.com 728x90 -->

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
if (!window.netshel_ord) { netshel_ord=Math.random()*10000000000000000;
}
if (!window.netshel_tile) { netshel_tile=1; }
document.write('<script language="JavaScript" src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/ns.macrumors/homepage;sz=728x90;tile='+netshel_tile+';ord=' + netshel_ord + '?" type="text/javascript"></scr' + 'ipt>');
netshel_tile++;
</script>
<!-- END AD TAG -->

is doing the same on MacRumors, and 

<!-- BEGIN RAW TAG - 468x60/728x90 - Ultimate-Guitar.Com: Main Page - DO NOT MODIFY --> 

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" SRC="http://ad.yieldmanager.com/imp?z=6&Z=728x90&s=48381&p=1&g=1"></SCRIPT> 
<!-- END TAG --> 

is doing the same on Ultimate Guitar.

Not sure what the best way to block these is, but I'm (personally) currently blocking them with hostperm.1 entries that blacklist all the respective ad-server domains (yieldmanager.com, doubleclick.net, and adgardener.com).

Comment 6

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

On VersionTracker.com, div id="box-ad"

Comment 7

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

On http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html?ex=1344571200&en=86b63388e4ee637c&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

div id="adxSponLinkA"

Comment 8

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Ad blocking is hiding some of the T-shirt images (Flash), e.g. here:
http://www.goapeshirts.com/products/014/

Comment 9

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

> Ad blocking is hiding some of the T-shirt images (Flash), e.g. here:
> http://www.goapeshirts.com/products/014/

I'm not seeing any difference between ad-blocking on and off on that page (or any of the other half-dozen shirt designs I randomly clicked on), either with a nightly or 1.5.1 and a fresh profile :(

Comment 10

[philippe (part-time)]

on http://www.asahi.com/english/english.html (English, IHT partner) and http://www.asahi.com/ (the Japanese part)

images and flash ads coming from http://img.ak.impact-ad.jp/

I currently block them with:
img[src*="impact-ad.jp"] {display:none;}
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][src*="impact-ad.jp"] {display:none;}

Comment 11

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

There's a trend now to do <blockElement blah="blah" blah="blah" onclick="window.open(http://adserver.com/blahblahblah.cgi/"> where the id or class aren't useful for blocking.

It's possible to block these using blockElement[onclick] selectors...seems a little hacky, but it works.

On http://cbs3.com/watercooler/local_story_241092424.html

div[onclick*="click.pulse360.com"],
td[onclick*="click.pulse360.com"],
div[class$="storyad"],
div[class$="adblock"]

Comment 12

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

On http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/dayinpictures?o=8&f=/g/a/2007/08/29/dip.DTL&type=dayinpictures

div[id^="adpos"]
img[src*="/RealMedia/ads/"]

(it's actually being blocked on the trunk, just not the branch for some reason)

Comment 13

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

On http://technorati.com/posts/tag/camino

div[id="ad"],
div[id="adsense-text"] - it's _probably_ safe to do this one as div[id*="adsense"]

Comment 14

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

Found a Flash ads (top banner) from *.zedo.com while looking up a word at http://dictionary.reference.com/ --for example:

http://c1.zedo.com//OzoDB/1/7/322623/V1/728x90.swf?quality=high

Comment 15

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

On http://www.zap2it.com/tv/news/zap-nbcshowsonunbox,0,3127567.story?coll=zap-tv-headlines

iframe with src "/includes/google-adsense-content.html?client=ca-tribune_news3_html"

Comment 16

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Attachment: belated omnibus patch

This takes care of everything here, with the following exceptions:

1) I didn't include the "text links" rule that philippe was not sure about
2) On both branch and trunk, with fresh profiles, I couldn't find any non-blocked ads on cl's three sites (but I added harvest.adgardener anyway)
3) On both branch and trunk, with a fresh profile, I couldn't find anything blocked on Simon's T-shirt site
4) I decided after further thought that div[class$="adblock"] wasn't any good, since it might catch layout divs like "padblock" (e.g., for a block with padding)

I checked the other id/class wildcard selectors and they all seemed to be safe.

Comment 17

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Comment on attachment 280193 [details] [diff] [review]
belated omnibus patch

Do we know that ai.yimg.jp is ads-only? I know that blocking yimg.com has caused issues before.

Comment 18

[philippe (part-time)]

(In reply to comment #17)

ai.yimg.jp is their ad-server.
yimg.jp is used for a huge amount of things : images, stylesheets, flash,...

I have had those rules in my user stylesheet for about 3 months now, I haven't experienced any problems (visiting the following subdomains: search/dailynews/auctions/weather).

Comment 19

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Comment on attachment 280193 [details] [diff] [review]
belated omnibus patch

OK.

Comment 20

[froodian (Ian Leue)]

Checked in on trunk and MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH.

Comment 21

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Given there have been no complaints/bugs filed against these rules, approved for 1.5.2 and landed on the CAMINO_1_5_BRANCH.