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Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

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Re: Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

#21

Post by victorhooi »

exratione wrote: post #4

It has been the case for years now that you really have to include ad and tracking blockers for browsers in your testing process somewhere, even if it's just a manual run-through in the smoke test section. Though I think that more than that is needed; e.g. adblock-enabled pools in your Selenium grid. You really have to start from the bottom up assuming that things are going to get blocked for some people and build in…

Do you really?

See, I don't agree with this - it's like saying as a site-owner, you need to cater to people who disable JavaScript, or who use Ghostery.

Sure, you can cater to them if you like (or if you think they're a sizeable portion of your audience). But if I was using one of those two, I certainly wouldn't go whine to a site owner and say "Your site doesn't work for me!". It's my choice to use those products.

Likewise for ad-blockers - sure, I use ad-blockers. But if a site breaks for me, I don't go whine to that site owner. I just choose to either disable the ad-blocker for that site (if the site has content I want), or I just don't frequent that site (if it doesn't).

Disabling JavaScript, or using an ad-blocker is an elective thing that some people choose to do (whether for paranoia, or because ads annoy them). It's not like say, accessibility for colour-blind people or people using a screen-reader, who can't really choose their disabilities. I have sympathy for people with disabilities (I myself am hard-of-hearing), however, I have less sympathy for people who disable JavaScript or use ad-blockers (Note that I myself use one - but if it breaks something, I debug it myself).

Re: Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

#22

Post by derefr »

nsgi wrote: post #13
Mahn wrote: post #12

I've experienced this, and it's a major pain the ass if we are talking about not just testing but making it work for AdBlocker users. In our case once we had to resort to rewording the method name in our REST AJAX API endpoint so it wouldn't contain the word "counter" for it not to randomly fail for adblocker users. Why would an adblocker be so incredibly aggresive as to block random words from urls is beyond me.

It makes sense if there's an image with the word "ad" in the url. Probably something similar to that.

A bit frightening to think about: SHA hexdigests (as used in, e.g., cache-busting) can contain the two-character-sequence "ad".

Re: Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

#24

Post by officer_gotcha »

Mahn wrote: post #12

I've experienced this, and it's a major pain the ass if we are talking about not just testing but making it work for AdBlocker users. In our case once we had to resort to rewording the method name in our REST AJAX API endpoint so it wouldn't contain the word "counter" for it not to randomly fail for adblocker users. Why would an adblocker be so incredibly aggresive as to block random words from urls is beyond me.

Why would advertisers be so incredibly aggressive as to pollute anything they can with spam is the real issue here.

Re: Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

#25

Post by spyder »

Vendan wrote: post #14

Interestingly, adblockers should be careful about doing stuff like this, as lots of sites would love a check as simple as "make a request to /twitter-sponsered-ad-paid and deny access if it fails"

Oh, it's very easy:
How it's made:

1. Look into the most popular filter's used by adblock extensions: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt

2. Choose for example a querystring rule from the beginning (from the "General advert blocking filters")

3. Append it to the url of an existing image

4. Use the onerror event to detect if it wasn't loaded

Re: Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

#26

Post by officer_gotcha »

victorhooi wrote: post #21
exratione wrote: post #4

It has been the case for years now that you really have to include ad and tracking blockers for browsers in your testing process somewhere, even if it's just a manual run-through in the smoke test section. Though I think that more than that is needed; e.g. adblock-enabled pools in your Selenium grid. You really have to start from the bottom up assuming that things are going to get blocked for some people and build in…

Do you really? See, I don't agree with this - it's like saying as a site-owner, you need to cater to people who disable JavaScript, or who use Ghostery. Sure, you can cater to them if you like (or if you think they're a sizeable portion of your audience). But if I was using one of those two, I certainly wouldn't go whine to a site owner and say "Your site doesn't work for me!". It's my choice to use those products. L…

As a user, I could not care less about a website that is so incompetently written, that it doesn't degrade gracefully enough when accessed with javascript is disabled. If someone chooses to cobble up such a site, it is almost certain they'll have the same attitude about their content (or service, if it is peddling something), so it is quite likely I don't want to be there in the first place. So, I don't whine as well, I just don't bother with it.

Re: Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

#27

Post by rnovak »

victorhooi wrote: post #21
exratione wrote: post #4

It has been the case for years now that you really have to include ad and tracking blockers for browsers in your testing process somewhere, even if it's just a manual run-through in the smoke test section. Though I think that more than that is needed; e.g. adblock-enabled pools in your Selenium grid. You really have to start from the bottom up assuming that things are going to get blocked for some people and build in…

Do you really? See, I don't agree with this - it's like saying as a site-owner, you need to cater to people who disable JavaScript, or who use Ghostery. Sure, you can cater to them if you like (or if you think they're a sizeable portion of your audience). But if I was using one of those two, I certainly wouldn't go whine to a site owner and say "Your site doesn't work for me!". It's my choice to use those products. L…

The only time I think it makes fiscal sense to ignore a sizable portion of your potential user-base is when you're already making so much money that the potential income from those users would be negligible.

It seems that the average number of page-views for all sites that are ad-blocked is something like 9% (and on some sites up to 50%)[1].

would you really want to sacrifice a 9-50% of possible revenue?

[1]https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Internet-use...

Re: Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

#28

Post by humbledrone »

victorhooi wrote: post #21
exratione wrote: post #4

It has been the case for years now that you really have to include ad and tracking blockers for browsers in your testing process somewhere, even if it's just a manual run-through in the smoke test section. Though I think that more than that is needed; e.g. adblock-enabled pools in your Selenium grid. You really have to start from the bottom up assuming that things are going to get blocked for some people and build in…

Do you really? See, I don't agree with this - it's like saying as a site-owner, you need to cater to people who disable JavaScript, or who use Ghostery. Sure, you can cater to them if you like (or if you think they're a sizeable portion of your audience). But if I was using one of those two, I certainly wouldn't go whine to a site owner and say "Your site doesn't work for me!". It's my choice to use those products. L…

The problem is that the end user who has an ad blocker installed doesn't see a big "THIS FEATURE OF THE WEB SITE IS BROKEN BECAUSE YOU HAVE AN AD BLOCKER INSTALLED" message when things don't work. They just see things not work. Maybe a few of the more tech-savvy users will guess that their ad blocker caused the problem, but most users will just assume that your site is crappy.

If your site is monetized through something other than ads (e.g. purchases), it might be in your financial interest to make sure that your site works correctly even in the presence of a poorly-written ad blocker. Of course this depends on how many of your users are affected by the problem.

Now if your site is free, with no ads, then I can see how your philosophy could make sense.

Re: Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

#29

Post by larkinrichards »

I once had a ceo ask why the header image on a prominent section of our website was not showing on his machine.

I opened the page, and to my surprise,, the header image didn't show on my computer either, but it showed on my coworkers screen.

In my standard "eliminate all simple causes" method I switched to incognito, and the header image loaded.

Somehow, I was able to recognize that it was due to an extension that was not active in incognito, and that the header image was named ...ads.png and it was catching a rather generic Adblock matcher. We renamed the file and all was good.

Re: Adblockers as the reason for InvalidAccessError

#30

Post by tcdent »

humbledrone wrote: post #28
victorhooi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really? See, I don't agree with this - it's like saying as a site-owner, you need to cater to people who disable JavaScript, or who use Ghostery. Sure, you can cater to them if you like (or if you think they're a sizeable portion of your audience). But if I was using one of those two, I certainly wouldn't go whine to a site owner and say "Your site doesn't work for me!". It's my choice to use those products. L…

The problem is that the end user who has an ad blocker installed doesn't see a big "THIS FEATURE OF THE WEB SITE IS BROKEN BECAUSE YOU HAVE AN AD BLOCKER INSTALLED" message when things don't work. They just see things not work. Maybe a few of the more tech-savvy users will guess that their ad blocker caused the problem, but most users will just assume that your site is crappy. If your site is monetized through someth…

I don't believe you need to be particularly tech-savvy to observe that the ad blocker extension you installed breaks the Internet.
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