472010 - Omnibus ad-blocking bug for January/February/March 2009

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Camino Graveyard :: Annoyance Blocking, defect)

Description

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

…and a happy no-ad year!

Comment 1

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

Truveo.com serves up Flash ads on TUAW.com. F'r'gzample, the following page,

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/01/04/imacworld-app-update/

shows a top banner ad coming from:

http://developer.truveo.com/apps/listWidget/truveo_listWidget.swf?query=tuaw&resultsnum=10&title=TUAW%20on%20Truveo

Comment 2

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

iframe from http://web.adblade.com on neatorama.com sometimes.

Comment 3

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

On msnbc.com underneath the markets section:

<table class="adbar" id="AdBannerFront_F1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="779" height="105">
<tbody><tr>
<td align="center" valign="top"><script type="text/javascript">dap('&PG=NBCFC5&AP=1390','728','90');</script><script src="http://rad.msn.com/ADSAdClient31.dll?GetSAd=&amp;DPJS=0&amp;PG=NBCFC5&amp;AP=1390" type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"></script><a target="_blank" href="http://g.msn.com/2AD00007/108000000000008858.2??PID=5551041&amp;UIT=G&amp;TargetID=8407972&amp;AN=976817083&amp;PG=NBCFC5&amp;ASID=1b0663832062407aa3d3c4c995b1e466"><img src="http://ads2.msn.com/CIS/116/000/000/000/000/419.jpg" alt="Click Here!" border="0" width="728" height="90"></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>

Comment 4

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

(In reply to comment #3)
> On msnbc.com underneath the markets section:

That table actually lives inside div[id=AdBanner_F1]; the image itself comes from http://ads2.msn.com, which we could block, too.

Comment 5

[philippe (part-time)]

This was mentioned in the forums yesterday. Not sure if the reporter plans to file a bug on it. I'll post my note about that site here before loosing it.

http://www.priceminister.com/offer?action=desc&aid=197827782
The 'add to cart' button is missing.

<form method="post" onsubmit="return checkSubmitted(this.name)" name="advert197827782" action="/cart">
<span>
<input type="hidden" value="add" name="action"/>
<input type="hidden" value="197827782" name="aid"/>
<a href="javascript:document.advert197827782.submit();">
<img alt="Acheter" src="http://aka.priceminister.com/res/pic/0/www/www/14058/to_cart.gif"/>
</a>
</span>

the add-to-cart image is blocked by
a:link[href*="advert"] img

Comment 6

[philippe (part-time)]

On the NYT article pages (and 'print pages')
sample: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html

div[id="adxToolSponsor"]

<div id="adxToolSponsor">
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/us/politics&pos=Frame4A&sn2=4e88d5fe/69d06416&sn1=fb2f4fcd/e8d90d0b&camp=foxsearch2009_emailtools_1011062c_nyt5&ad=NOT_120x60_article_tools_v2_nowplaying&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/notorious">

<img class="label" width="62" height="20" border="0" alt="Article Tools Sponsored By" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/ads/fox/article-sponsor.gif"/>
<img width="120" height="60" border="0" alt="" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/adx/images/ADS/19/17/ad.191792/not_120x60_now.gif"/>
</a>
</div>

bug 437919 already added
div[id^="adxLeaderboard"],
div[id^="adxBigAd"],

Comment 7

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

On Buy.com (one of our search plug-in offerings) results pages

div[class~="textlinkads"]

Comment 8

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

There are ads scattered throughout Earthlink webmail that, by all accounts, we should already be blocking with

a:link[href*="doubleclick"] img
and
img[src*=".doubleclick.net"]

Some we do, in fact, block, but other essentially identical ones we do not; you can see an example on https://webmail.earthlink.net/wam/login.jsp

We can probably block these by using iframe[name="skybannerframe"] and iframe[name="skyscraperframe"] (or a scarier combo like iframe[name^="sky"][name$="frame"]), but I'm curious why we're not blocking them.  Is the JS doing the location replacement after the CSS loads (and if so, why does toggling the ad-blocker off and back on again not fix it)?

Comment 9

[philippe (part-time)]

(In reply to comment #8)
here is the code for the ad I get (fished with Minefield and a user stylesheet with the same adblocking as Camino; thanks Firebug) :

<div class="skyscraper">
<iframe width="120" scrolling="no" height="600" frameborder="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" border="0" src="html/blank.htm" onfocus="loadFocus()" name="skyscraperframe">
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" bgcolor="#ffffff" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0">
<script type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script src="https://secure.uac.advertising.com/wrapper/aceUAC.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script src="https://servedby.advertising.com/site=738222/size=120600/u=1/bnum=83462345/hr=8/hl=4/c=0/scres=5/swh=1680x1050/tile=1/f=2/r=1/optn=1/fv=0/rich=0/dref=https%253A%252F%252Fwebmail.earthlink.net%252Fwam%252Flogin.jsp" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<a onclick="AdClicked(clickLineVarName6888850330); return false;" href="#">
<img width="120" height="600" border="0" alt="Click to learn more..." src="https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/248/894/72H/origin2.adsdk.com//CDN/279/CSG_TWW_MKT_20080513_01_photo_120x600.jpg"/>
</a>
</body>
</html>
</iframe>

Comment 10

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

On a handful of Detroit Free Press articles, such as:

http://www.freep.com/article/20090208/SPORTS05/902080462/1048/rss03

there's an iframe with the src of:

http://www.adfusion.com/adfusion.partnersite/cate goryhtml.aspx?userfeedguid=c4912e92-af0a-42a9-9e69-a3decde1accd

It's in a rotation, so you might not see it every time, but that's the one iframe we don't seem to block on the Freep.

Comment 11

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Some useful blocking strings might be gleaned from this, too (found during investigation of comment 10):

http://freep.ur.gcion.com/Scripts/AD/Adtechscript.js

Comment 12

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

There's a flash ad on the left side here:

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/2009/02/16/20090216SubsCollde16-ON.html

coming from

http://www.azcentral.com/advert/flash/banner/bedm art/300x250.swf?azcserviceid=akamaiserved&azcservicepage=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.azcentral.com%2Foffbeat% 2Farticles%2F2009%2F02%2F16%2F20090216SubsCollde16-ON.html%3Fsource%3Dnletter-entertainment&clickTag=http://gannett.gcion.com/adlink/5111/328996/0/ 170/AdId=178675;BnId=5;itime=904248642;nodecode=y es;link=http://www.azcentral.com/advert/bedmart/index.html

Looks like more AdTech and OAS stuff, but I can't quite figure out why we aren't blocking that already.

cl

Comment 13

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Blocking the "articleflex-container" div on Freep.com would handle most of the ads there, too.

Comment 14

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Blocking "poster-container" divs on Freep.com will take care of the occasional ads that show up on the right sidebar, too.

Comment 15

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

(In reply to comment #13)
> Blocking the "articleflex-container" div on Freep.com would handle most of the
> ads there, too.

(In reply to comment #14)
> Blocking "poster-container" divs on Freep.com will take care of the occasional
> ads that show up on the right sidebar, too.

I think you're on your own with those two; neither of them sound remotely ad-like or ad-specific.

Comment 16

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

On macworld.com: <div class="adsTextHouse adTextHouse2Colw">

Comment 17

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

On http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/biztech/pickpocket-swipes-secret-telstra-phone/2009/02/19/1234632937082.html

div[class^="adSpot"]

Comment 18

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

(In reply to comment #5)
> http://www.priceminister.com/offer?action=desc&aid=197827782
> The 'add to cart' button is missing.
> [...]
> the add-to-cart image is blocked by
> a:link[href*="advert"] img

Any idea how popular/important this site is?  We can probably fix this and not regress dict.leo.org by doing something like

a:link[href^="http://"][href*="advert"] img

It's more of a hack than I'd rather introduce, but at the same time the site is seriously broken (admittedly because of their own somewhat-bizarre naming) with the current rule.  The current rule also has the advantage of working with relative hrefs, which a fixed rule would not have.

If the site is really popular in the Francophone world, I'd probably lean towards "fixing" it with and @-moz-document exception.

Comment 19

[philippe (part-time)]

(In reply to comment #18)
 
> Any idea how popular/important this site is?

I've no idea how popular that site is. I'm asking some of my contacts in France. It appears quite big (travel tickets real estate computers books DVDs,...). They also have British and Spanish sister sites. Those appear much smaller though. I couldn't find a way to reproduce the issue outside of priceminister.com, the main site.

Comment 20

[philippe (part-time)]

(In reply to comment #19)
> I'm asking some of my contacts in France ...

According to one contact it is quite a big thing over there, not beloved but much used (same love-hate thing as ebay).

PS, not top 100, but still sizeable:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/priceminister.com

Comment 21

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

(In reply to comment #20)
> According to one contact it is quite a big thing over there, not beloved but
> much used (same love-hate thing as ebay).
> 
> PS, not top 100, but still sizeable:
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/priceminister.com

And 27 in the French listings: http://www.alexa.com/browse?CategoryID=476&Start=21

I guess we should add a custom @-moz-document override rule, then.  Thanks for looking into it.

Comment 22

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

Several unblocked ads at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=arcology

(a) A couple of iframes from http://iacas-images.adbureau.net/ at the top and right sidebar of the page, pointing to images or flash (changes upon reload). The patch for bug 463974 blocks flash, but not gif's (or other still image files), iirc.

(b) Flash ads below the content, and below the right sidebar ad in (a), coming from bannerfarm.ace.advertising.com -- although that might be covered by the patch in bug 463974 anyhow.

Comment 23

[philippe (part-time)]

Stop the press ! Ads on Gmail.
Firebug returns this:
<div class="oM">
<div id=":bp">
<div class="u9">Sponsored Links</div>
<div class="vb">
<b>
</b>
<div class="vc">
...
</div>
</div>
<div class="vb">
</div>
<div class="vb">
</div>
<div class="vb">
</div>

div[class="oM"] ought to do the trick. In a @-moz-document block. I'm testing it…

(and they broke my user stylesheet).

Comment 24

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

There's a small animated GIF sneaking through on the NYTimes this morning:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/adx/images/ADS/19/61/ad.196154/500days_nytimes_120x60.gif

How in the *heck* is that not being caught already?

Comment 25

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

On ESPN, for example, at 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=290322008

the snippet

<!-- begin Poster --><div class="gutter"><iframe allowTransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" width="160" height="600" src="http://this.content.served.by.adshuffle.com/p/kl/46/799/r/12/4/8/ast0k3n/f3oIOukauolq~sl~bO1233J7DpOgumJbcOb/view.html?2009.03.22.16.05.39&ASTPCT=http://log.go.com/log?srvc%3dsz%26guid%3d96885ED6-61B0-44C2-B7DA-F489E046C71A%26drop%3d0%26addata%3d820:60903:492370:65%26a%3d1%26goto%3d"></iframe></div><!-- end Poster -->

is putting a nice fat ad on the right side.

Comment 26

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Same server, different position and different page:

<!-- begin Pencil_Top ad -->
<div class="span-6 ad pencil top"><!-- begin Pencil_Top ad --></div>
<!-- end Pencil_Top ad -->
<!-- begin Banner ad -->
<div class="span-6 ad banner top"><div id="upperad"><iframe allowTransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" width="728" height="90" src="http://this.content.served.by.adshuffle.com/p/kl/46/799/r/12/4/8/ast0k3n/f3oIOukauolq~sl~bO1233J7NSUdzutRkpV/view.html?2009.03.24.12.09.24&ASTPCT=http://log.go.com/log?srvc%3dsz%26guid%3d81E933C7-2CDC-4FFF-AAE5-268493D6906B%26drop%3d0%26addata%3d0:53574:492368:65%26a%3d1%26goto%3d"></iframe></div>
</div>
<!-- end Banner ad -->

is the HTML snippet;

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4011970&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines

is the page.

Comment 27

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

We're incorrectly blocking the forum posts at, for example:

http://coradine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=970

It looks like the trigger is <h3 class="first"> . That's the tag on the blocked content, anyway.

cl

Comment 28

[philippe (part-time)]

(In reply to comment #27)
> We're incorrectly blocking the forum posts at, for example:
> 
> http://coradine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=970
> 
> It looks like the trigger is <h3 class="first"> . That's the tag on the blocked
> content, anyway.

Blocked by div[id^="p360"],

markup is
<div id="p3609" class="post bg2">
<div class="inner">
<span class="corners-top">
</span>
<div class="postbody">
</div>
<dl id="profile3609" class="postprofile">
</dl>
<div class="back2top">
</div>
<span class="corners-bottom">
</span>
</div>

Comment 29

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

Attachment: Jan-Feb-Mar Omnnibus ad-blocking

Ahem. Somehow the end of February ran away.

This fixes everything here that I've not otherwise commented about; I've deferred bug 479683 until next month since its resolution is not yet clear.

Comment 30

[Stuart Morgan]

Comment on attachment 369967 [details] [diff] [review]
Jan-Feb-Mar Omnnibus ad-blocking

>+img[src*="ads2.msn.com"],
>+img[src*="adsdk.com"],
>+img[src*="adbureau.net"],
>+img[src*="adshuffle.com"],

I wonder about these *adfoo things (here and in the link and iframe sections). What if someone makes a music playlist generation site called radshuffle.com, for example? Could we do ^="adfoo" and *=".adfoo"?

Comment 31

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

Attachment: Jan-Feb-Mar Omnnibus ad-blocking, v1.1

> I wonder about these *adfoo things (here and in the link and iframe sections).
> What if someone makes a music playlist generation site called radshuffle.com,
> for example? Could we do ^="adfoo" and *=".adfoo"?

We can't ^="adfoo" because those will fail on most "http://bar.adfoo" or "http://adfoo.baz" URLs, but *=".adfoo" and *="/adfoo" seem to work fine here.

I also removed iframe[src*="Adserver"] since I can't find it anymore on ESPN, and added div[id^="ad-front"] to block more ads on MSNBC's home page.

Comment 32

[Stuart Morgan]

Comment on attachment 370739 [details] [diff] [review]
Jan-Feb-Mar Omnnibus ad-blocking, v1.1

sr=smorgan

Comment 33

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

Landed on cvs trunk.

Comment 34

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

Landed on the MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH in advance of 1.6.8.