[HN Gopher] Ad block shouldn't break your checkout
___________________________________________________________________
Ad block shouldn't break your checkout
Author : infomiho
Score : 174 points
Date : 2021-05-18 13:00 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ilakovac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ilakovac.com)
| mikelward wrote:
| British Airways does this. It's been broken for years.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Yes. And British Airways is renowned for fractally bad IT.
|
| e.g.
|
| outage, 2017
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/31/ba-it-shutd...
|
| https://www.cloudpro.co.uk/it-infrastructure/7800/british-ai...
|
| outage, 2019
|
| https://www.itpro.co.uk/disaster-recovery-dr/34162/british-a...
|
| Supply chain hack, 2018:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45446529
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Hang on: The Tee Spring code checks if GA is there and works
| without it, the website breaks because Ad block replaces GA with
| a fake object that doesn't have the same API.
|
| Perhaps some companies have the resources to check if their
| websites run with different ad blockers, but expecting websites
| to work when plugins are replacing and breaking running code is a
| big ask.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Perhaps some companies have the resources to check if their
| websites run with different ad blockers,
|
| Checking the top 3 adblockers that command the majority of
| market share would be a much smaller ask - maybe smaller than a
| check-mobile-browser sized ask.
| Navarr wrote:
| Yeah this is very clearly on the ad-blocker.
|
| I think TeeSpring has the right idea - they're checking that GA
| is loaded, if it is, then do stuff with it, if it's not, then
| don't.
|
| I don't understand how a website can and should be expected to
| adapt to a browser plugin changing the APIs they depend on out
| from underneath them.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The ad blocker is probably trying to do the right thing for
| their users, to. Too many websites check that GA is loaded,
| if it is, then do stuff with it, if it's not, then redirect
| to a "Please disable your ad-blocker" page.
| jrockway wrote:
| I think the key point is that the only way to do this right
| is to have a quirks list and both implementations, and pick
| the implementation based on that list.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _I think TeeSpring has the right idea - they 're checking
| that GA is loaded, if it is, then do stuff with it, if it's
| not, then don't._
|
| I think they could go one step further and may be
| _try...catch_ (sandbox) all access to third-party services
| that aren 't critical.
|
| User-agents, which browsers are, expectedly do put a lot of
| control in the hands of the end-users. Such breakages should
| be factored in and worked around (provided there are enough
| engineering resources to throw at the problem, of course).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Why does checkout depend on Google APIs?
| OJFord wrote:
| But you don't even need to check, you just don't blow up and
| still check out if it doesn't work?
|
| Put it this way, forget adblock, if the GA call fails, it
| should still check out. (Assuming the problem doesn't affect
| other stuff too, like internet down or whatever.)
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I think the problem is that with the code-as-written, if the
| GA call fails, the relevant `window` field won't be
| populated, which the code is detecting.
|
| Given the hyper-malleable nature of JavaScript in an HTML
| page in a user-agent owned by the end user, at some point the
| developer _has_ to draw a line in the sand and say "This
| category of failure modes is not checked," because it's
| mathematically impossible to check all possible failure modes
| in that configuration. "An extension is intentionally faking
| an object in the `window` context" just happens to be on the
| other side of the "don't check" line for this application,
| because it's extremely unlikely (and, one could argue, user-
| self-inflicted).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Just stop using Google spyware. Takes zero amount of resources.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Don't put GA there, then.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I think the point is that Google Analytics shouldn't be an
| essential part of your site, so it totally breaking for any
| reason should be unnoticeable to the end user.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| If it had broken, the code in the post would have worked. How
| exactly is code supposed to handle a dependency existing, but
| not being the API shape that it should be because a browser
| extension added an incomplete stub? Should every line of code
| get wrapped in try/catch?
|
| There's a big difference between "resilient against a missing
| dependency" and "being resilient in the face of getting
| literally any object instead of the dependency you expected
| to get."
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Should every line of code get wrapped in try/catch?
|
| Everything Google Analytics does is expendable, so the
| block of code that deals with it should be wrapped in
| try/catch.
|
| > There's a big difference between "resilient against a
| missing dependency" and "being resilient in the face of
| getting literally any object instead of the dependency you
| expected to get."
|
| If Google pushes a breaking change to the Google Analytics
| API tomorrow, that shouldn't break checkout either.
| ratww wrote:
| _> Should every line of code get wrapped in try /catch?_
|
| For third party dependencies that might not get loaded for
| whatever reason? Yes, sure. There are better ways to do it,
| but that's the idea.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| It's not. It can work without it. The issue is something is
| pretending to be Google Analytics just enough to cause
| problems.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I believe that Firefox is replacing some Facebook JavaScript
| with a stub, to avoid that sites break because some tracking
| bits are missing.
|
| So the reason why the GA object is replaced, rather than
| removed, is because removing it would break other sites. Tee
| Spring is trying to do the right thing, but fail because other
| sites don't do the same.
| gpvos wrote:
| Both uBlock Origin and TeeSpring are trying to do the right
| thing, but in incompatible ways. I would say in this case the
| onus is on uBlock Origin to provide a stub that is as
| transparent as possible.
| acomjean wrote:
| I run ad block (unlock origin) on Firefox. I noticed I couldn't
| order on restaurants that used "Toast" for they're ordering. Try
| chrome, works. But the reason wasn't the browser but just I
| wasn't ad blocking on chrome..
| npsimons wrote:
| Let me add that blocking outgoing requests to non-standard ports
| should also not break payment systems, yet I've encountered
| exactly that.
|
| If your checkout system connects over anything but port 443, you
| done fucked up.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Fairly regular support conversation on the community website I
| run:
|
| "I can't see the images on the 'Adverts' page."
|
| "Do you have an ad-blocker installed?"
|
| "Yes."
|
| "What do you think an ad-blocker does..."
| danpalmer wrote:
| I never ceased to be amazed at how much core site functionality
| is implemented with Google Tag Manager.
|
| I block it with uBlock Origin and many standard ecommerce sites
| just don't function in a most basic way.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| I am an author of a photo editor https://www.Photopea.com .
|
| Whenever someone reports a bug to me, I ask them if they use any
| site-modifying extensions. If they do, I ignore them completely,
| even if they wrote a long, detailed report.
|
| Web authors make websites for standard web browsers. I do not
| consider a browser with site-modifying extensions to be a
| standard web browser, and it is not my job to test my website
| with all 1,000,000 extensions that exist on earth.
|
| It all started six years ago, when my website contained <div
| id="ad" ... and somebody reported, that their adblock removes
| that element, but it is not the ad. What kind of a mental process
| should a brain perform to conclude, that it is a bug in a
| website, and not in their extension, which is supposed to remove
| ads.
| zentiggr wrote:
| div id="ad" but not containing an actual ad, seems like a
| pretty obvious unintentional overlap, and one that's not going
| to go away.
|
| How difficult would it be for you to change the div name to not
| coincide with the characters most closely involved with one of
| the most contentious technologies around? And never have to
| deal with that potential conflict again?
|
| > What kind of a mental process should a brain perform to
| conclude, that it is a bug in a website, and not in their
| extension, which is supposed to remove ads.
|
| Well, if the extension looks for obvious ad-related layout, and
| your site just happened to use that name, then yes, you have a
| bug related to common usage patterns.
|
| Even if you used the name before anything ad related, when the
| world changes around you, you can choose to adapt, or you can
| get offended and obstinate and fall further and further into a
| niche of your own creation.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| I've run into similar things with the word ad, banner etc but
| they don't have to be standalone to triggers some filters,
| adblock is fairly dumb in that sense.
| graton wrote:
| > I ask them if they use any site-modifying extensions. If they
| do, I ignore them completely, even if they wrote a long,
| detailed report.
|
| Note to self, don't use Photopea due to poor customer support.
|
| You would think the customer support would at least tell them
| to remove/disable the add-ons instead of ignoring them.
| nudgeee wrote:
| AFAIK Ivan is customer support, photopea is a one-man
| website, and one of the best out there.
| pixelbreaker wrote:
| yeah, I also noted not to use photopea, their whole argument
| just comes across as arrogance/laziness. If you rely on GA
| loading before the rest of a page can actually work, then
| your site is bullshit. Enforcing a users data is given to GA
| is bullshit.
| jamespo wrote:
| I expect they'll get over the loss of your business
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| In any case, it doesn't make much sense to advertise that
| you purposely ignore user complaints. If you do that,
| then that's bad, but why wear it as a badge of honor?
|
| Maybe he's just so sick of hearing about errors or bugs
| from thousands of users, he's sabotaging his own product
| in hopes it will just die and he can move on.
| jraph wrote:
| Yes, don't let them write a long message if you are not going
| to read it. At least tell people that they need to try the
| website without any extension before reporting any issue.
|
| Anyway, ad blockers are standard now and they usually share
| the blocking lists. Supporting them is just a matter of
| installing uBlock Origin in the browser you use to develop.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > What kind of a mental process should a brain perform to
| conclude, that it is a bug in a website, and not in their
| extension, which is supposed to remove ads.
|
| On the other hand you know how ad blocking works and if it's
| not too much effort just change the class name?
|
| If your website behaves like malware is it really the fault of
| antimalware software that blocks it? If there was a better way
| to detect malware, sure, but heuristics is the best we've got
| and they do sometimes break - if it's not too much effort to
| make your website not behave like malware why not do it?
|
| I fully agree with you about other, more intrusive site-
| modifying extensions, but ad-blockers are fairly lightweight
| and only target behavior that looks malicious, and it's fairly
| easy not to trigger them.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| An update: almost nobody pays for Photopea, and all my reports
| are from users who use it for free. I fixed over 3000 issues so
| far, some took minutes, others took weeks:
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%...
|
| A "popular" issue is, that people use an extension, which
| renames files saved by Photopea to .TXT. It is reported several
| times a week and every time, I tell people to disable an
| extension. They often argue, that it can not be caused by an
| extension, or even lie, that they disabled it and it did not
| help.
|
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/3246
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/3227
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/3194
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/3187
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/3116
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/3110
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/3049 and so on.
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| How does having GA integrated into your sales flow prevent
| these situations from happening?
| derimagia wrote:
| > the extension "Google docs offline" was renaming files form
| Photopea to .TXT. You are using the same extension.
|
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/2294#issuecommen.
| ..
|
| "Google docs offline" is an official extension from google
| which you get prompted to install when you go to Google Drive
| in Chrome without the extension installed. I don't think that
| caused anything and it looks like there was an actual bug you
| had:
|
| > There really was a bug in Photopea. If you opened a file,
| whose name started with a dot . , like .myfile.psd, It was
| always exported as .TXT_ > I have fixed this bug. You can
| open files with any names now, and they should be saved under
| the right extension.
|
| https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/3116#issuecommen.
| ..
|
| It did seem like the issue was on your end and not the
| extensions though.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > What kind of a mental process should a brain perform to
| conclude, that it is a bug in a website, and not in their
| extension, which is supposed to remove ads.
|
| For website owners who are losing revenue, the mental process
| is simple: "If I change this webpage I will get more sales."
| tux3 wrote:
| >I do not consider a browser with site-modifying extensions to
| be a standard web browser
|
| What do you consider a standard web browser?
|
| If someone ships a browser with Tracking Protection (like
| Firefox), or with NoScript preinstalled (like Tor Browser), or
| with another adblocker preinstalled, is that a standard browser
| because the user didn't modify it?
|
| Or is it based on the number of user. Is your standard browser
| really just Google Chrome, because Google has a lot of
| marketshare?
|
| I ask, because I looked up the statistics, and they say between
| 25-45% of users have an ad blocker, depending on the country.
|
| It seems pretty unfair to ignore your users completely, even if
| they wrote a long, detailed report. No?
| StavrosK wrote:
| Maybe he chooses to ignore non-paying users, which is fair.
| Hell, ignoring _any_ kind of user is fair. Might not be a
| great business strategy, but it 's his site.
| penultimatename wrote:
| I think most of Photopea's users would be using the free
| services. I don't see why a developer would want to bend over
| backwards to support users who aren't paying them, aren't
| viewing ads to support their usage/bandwidth costs, and are
| having an issue due to another piece of software they have
| installed.
|
| It's like emailing an email provider asking why your desktop
| email client is displaying emails weird.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| A standard web browser is a browser, which runs a website
| according to web standards. If an extension e.g. replaces
| every image in a webpage with the image of Bill Gates, it is
| not a standard browser in my opinion, and users should not
| report it to me as a bug in my website.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think that's a fair point of view. I use ad blockers, and if
| you site breaks with them, I won't use your site. If you're OK
| with that, I am as well.
| barrkel wrote:
| We're talking about a checkout. We're at the end of the sales
| funnel, where the monetary exchange is finalized, the deal is
| sealed, the value delivered.
|
| Breaking this based on an ad blocker just loses you money.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > Breaking this based on an ad blocker just loses you money.
|
| That's false. Similar thinking to how the MPAA said that
| downloading a MP3 is a lost sale. There was never a sale to
| begin with, the user is not interested in a purchase
| regardless of whether the pirated content is available.
|
| Here, the user will just go through the checkout again in a
| browser without ab-block or disable it. Why would they
| suddenly not need a power washer because they're running ad-
| block?
|
| In fact, if anything, it'll train the user to disable ad-
| block when they're ready to checkout--from _ANY_ site since
| most of them are broken under ad-block.
| ookware wrote:
| Considering it has been reported that over half of
| potential customers will abandon a purchase if a page takes
| over 3 seconds to load, failing to load at all suggests
| you'll likely get similar - if not higher - losses
|
| https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/consumer-
| psychology-t...
| db48x wrote:
| No, if I visit a site that is broken by my adblocker, or
| that uses recaptcha, I just never visit it again.
| DigitallyFidget wrote:
| This is so horrendously wrong. I've experienced this on
| many different online retailers. I don't suddenly not
| want/need the product, I just go elsewhere. If a physical
| store I go to has their checkout system go down, I'll go
| elsewhere. Online isn't an exception to me, prior to this
| article, I NEVER realized that it was a possibility that my
| adblock was the cause. I just went to a retailer that
| didn't have a broken checkout. Going elsewhere is a more
| simple and easy fix than troubleshooting "WTF is wrong with
| this site?".
| detaro wrote:
| The sales people are always on about how easily people
| "abandon carts" due to small friction. Lots of things
| people buy they a) don't need that urgently or b) can buy
| somewhere else. Some fan shirt off TeeSpring is very
| strongly in the "not urgently needed" category, your
| powerwasher example might very well be too _and_ can be
| bought from tons of places.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| This is probably true. I guess my buying impulses are
| tapered compared to others.
| priyanmuthu wrote:
| This is assuming that they know the ad blocker is causing
| the problem. I'm just going to buy the power washer from
| amazon because your site's checkout is not working!
| waynesonfire wrote:
| of course you are.. but when you're not, the value of
| using the alternative site out weights having to go
| through the checkout process again or a 4 second page
| load as someone else suggested is a deal breaker.
| Marsymars wrote:
| One of the largest pharmacy chains in my area has a covid-
| vaccine-booking page that's impossible to complete if ad-blockers
| are enabled. (Even Safari content blockers on iOS break it.)
|
| Developers failing to test sites with adblockers could literally
| result in people _dying_.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Mediamarkt.be doesn't work at all on firefox mobile.
| mindslight wrote:
| While we're at it, potential customers shouldn't need to identify
| pictures of traffic lights and buses to shop your store. If
| you're _a web store_ , then you're in the business of selling
| things and advertising that you're selling them far and wide. The
| only place you _might_ need a CAPTCHA is the account login page,
| and only then after there are multiple failed attempts from the
| same IP address. Other than that, get the fuck out of your
| customers ' way.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Depends on if you have a bot/scraping problem or not. Though
| admittedly sitting behind something like Cloudflare and
| leveraging their reputation system rather than blithely
| embedding recaptcha into your page might be the way to go, but
| then you're married to Cloudflare. Pick your poison.
| mindslight wrote:
| Apart from the caveat I gave regarding logins, there is
| simply no such thing as a bot or scraping "problem" for a web
| store. Your goal is to advertise what you are selling far and
| wide - bots are your friends. If you have problems with site
| load, the first thing to do is make your site more efficient.
| If you're a small operation and that still isn't enough, add
| generic server side throttling.
| complainic wrote:
| What OKR does a purchase move if there is no analytics tracker
| there to see it?
| jerf wrote:
| My local energy company has a website where you can register an
| account to pay remotely with them. I have uMatrix on and it was
| blocking some third party scripts. It managed to get my account
| into some sort of "half-created" state. It is impossible to log
| in, impossible to reset the password, and impossible to create a
| new account with my (physical!) address because "an account
| already exists for that address". I ultimately found another
| solution, but that's the worst breakage I've ever seen... not
| just that my payment didn't go through, but my browser config
| permanently scrambled the entire possibility of ever getting an
| account set up!
|
| (I did not bother trying to explain this to a human on the phone,
| because of the aforementioned alternate solution. That just
| sounds a supersized order of pain.)
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's a bad bug on their end. It implies that if a user's
| user-agent crashes (or they kick the power plug out of the wall
| at the wrong time), they can get into this state.
|
| As a general principle, it should be impossible for a client to
| "half-configure" an account; the Internet isn't designed to be
| reliable enough to support guarantees that all the relevant
| messages get sent and received.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| My fave example of this - I am using NextDNS for ad-blocking on
| my stock Pixel 4a, the Wells Fargo app won't allow me to sign in
| with fingerprint or username/pass while using DNS over TLS.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| IMO, this points out the inherent and unresolveable contradiction
| between browsers being a user-agent, and browsers being a
| precisely-specified execution environment for arbitrary
| applications. A browser that is built to operate in the interests
| of its user _will not_ run code that is harmful to them, whether
| that 's code to track them, code to mine bitcoin, or code to
| display advertisements. On the other hand, a browser that is
| compliant with the (largely advertising-company-defined) web
| platform standard _will_ do all these things, and can 't permit
| any user-agent features or extension mechanisms that would
| interfere with them. The web platform standard as we know it
| essentially specifies that the browser belongs to the website
| operator (within some sandboxing guarantees), not to the browser
| user. On the whole, I prefer that software I run on my computer
| belong to me; this makes using the web a necessary evil at best.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| The answer to the contradiction is to test with uBlock.
|
| The existence of Firefox as a counterweight to Chrome means
| that the web standards are not going to win. Ads will be
| blocked. Cope and deal.
| sabujp wrote:
| it shouldn't break lots of stuff but it does, e.g. access to bank
| & other financial sites.
| al2o3cr wrote:
| TBH I don't see this as a TeeSpring problem - the code on their
| page guards against a realistic scenario (the GA script fails to
| load), but the "break" is caused by uBlock's changes.
|
| The article's title is correct: ad block shouldn't break
| checkout. Injecting a bogus value into a global breaks checkout,
| so ad block shouldn't do that.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| How does analytics factor into the functionality of the
| checkout? That's the only question that matters here. The
| answer is it doesn't, so regardless of if it loads, is buggy,
| or has weird data, it shouldn't stop the checkout process.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| It's both.
|
| as mention other places though, missing window.ga at all on
| other sites can cause worse problems. I'm not sure mimicing the
| whole api is useful, but maybe not adding the stub on teespring
| will be.
|
| On teesprings side, it's not their fault, but adding '&&
| window.ga.getAll' will fix the issue
| tyingq wrote:
| I agree with that, though if I'm TeeSpring, I'd fix it anyway.
| It's silly to throw out incoming business. I assume the same
| thing would happen if there were a brief GA outage.
| suprfsat wrote:
| If GA is unreachable then window.ga wouldn't be defined.
|
| The author is running an extension that specifically injects
| code to make window.ga into something unexpected, and then
| complaining about it.
| tyingq wrote:
| Yes, though again, throwing out a checkout session for
| anyone running that extension isn't wise.
|
| _" If GA is unreachable then window.ga wouldn't be
| defined."_
|
| The legacy code you insert for GA does: var ga =
| document.createElement('script'); first, then loads GA.
| Wouldn't that have the same issue if GA is unreachable?
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Personally I think the path should guard against any change to
| unnecessary third party library function. Because third party
| script can be bugged and break your site in a funny way. Just
| like the story broken facebook login broke many site and apps.
| The api behaves funny, so everything broke all together because
| you explicitly rely on it without care.
| quitethelogic wrote:
| I do see it as a TeeSpring problem. This particular bug got in
| my way 2 weeks ago when I was attempting to buy some merch to
| support a youtube channel I frequent. I almost abandoned the
| purchase.
|
| A shopping site breaking checkout when there's a google
| analytics problem is madness, IMO. uBlock Origin is hugely
| popular. With 10M (claimed) active users, you should probably
| be testing against uBlock Origin for your e-commerce site.
|
| As an aside, buying from TeeSpring was a little... interesting.
| You add the items to your cart and pay like at any other site.
| Instead of being charged for the total, I got invoiced
| separately for each (including separate confirmation emails),
| along with 5 or 6 duplicate shipping notices for one of the
| items. My credit card was also charged separately for each
| item. I get that there are probably reasons for this purchase
| flow, but it's not implemented well.
|
| I got my stuff and all is good, but the whole buying experience
| was janky.
| IncRnd wrote:
| That may be true from a technical perspective, but it
| ultimately is TeeSprings problem. The problem they face is lost
| revenue from people who already clicked the purchase button.
| tpl wrote:
| Coupling your checkout to Google Analytics is not good though.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| If a purchase occurred on the internet and Google didn't
| know, did it really happen?
| reddit_clone wrote:
| Funny. But why do I feel sad?
| avmich wrote:
| Practically the whole Web doesn't function if client blocks add,
| disables JavaScript (which became quite annoying lately) or uses
| Tor.
|
| I'd like to find a solution which would restore the ability to
| use sites. I'm thinking about website cleanup offering (startup
| anyone?), I wonder if something similar already exists.
| dooglius wrote:
| I use Tor by default, and while many sites don't work (TFA is
| behind a Cloudflare captcha, ironically enough), I wouldn't say
| it's a majority.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| As a web developer, ad blockers are maddening. The problem is
| that they're part of an arms race that even if you don't use ads,
| you have to be aware of.
|
| Early in my career, I worked on a site that displayed images,
| each of which was given a GUID and loaded from a server in
| thumbnail form. Fortunately, one of our developers used an ad
| blocker, because she realized two (of a couple hundered)
| thumbnails didn't show up. Turns out her ad blocker was running a
| heuristic based on both dimensions of the thumbnail and the URL
| the thumbnail was served from, and if it saw the sequence 'ad' in
| the URL (plus some additional pieces of the URL we never
| identified; attempts to reproduce it with a simpler URL didn't
| pan out), the browser extension would block the image from
| loading and our users got a broken image.
|
| The best solution we could come up with was tweak the server
| logic to substitude 'a' with 'g' when vending the URLs, and then
| reverse the substitution when fetching them. Huge pain in the ass
| on our end, but necessary to ensure our customers' user
| experience didn't break from their own ad blockers.
|
| "Ad block shouldn't break your checkout..." but it's third-party
| code you don't own or control splicing behavior atop the code you
| _do_ own and control, so _of course_ it breaks things
| occasionally. It 's like the old era of the MacOS Desk Accessory
| API. It is provably mathematically impossible for the developer
| to guarantee successful execution of a Turing-complete program if
| the program can be arbitrarily modified by third-party injection,
| so the odds that browser extension in general (and ad blockers in
| particular, as they are designed to modify the intended site
| behavior) don't break any website are vanishingly close to zero.
| randompwd wrote:
| > atop the code you do own and control
|
| It's a web browser. Look at it as if you're giving people the
| option to run your code in their browser. Your code is not
| entitled to be there - it's just a suggestion.
|
| Your server side endpoints are what you own and control.
|
| That's (thankfully) a fundamental part of the web. The days of
| proprietary blobs running opaque code are done(java applets and
| flash etc.)
| wai1234 wrote:
| Why is it checking for GA at all? A critical function like
| accepting payment should be bullet proof. It's critical code and
| should be treated that way.
| pixelbreaker wrote:
| 123-reg, can't use any of their support without disabling ad
| blockers, and built in blocking in vivaldi. Totally useless.
| beshrkayali wrote:
| I think you need to consider changing the title of your article.
| If I understood correctly, you're saying: TeeSpring needs to fix
| their stupid checkout. I think your title should be: Your
| checkout should not break because of ad-block. You have it the
| other way around. It's important because most people understood
| it like how I initially did and I was prepared to write a lengthy
| comment on how wrong this argument is.
|
| It's your job to fix your site so it doesn't break because of ad-
| block. If you're determined on refusing service for people who
| don't want to be tracked by breaking checkout, that's fine as
| well. But then you don't get to complain.
|
| Side note: my pet peeve these days is emojis. People need to stop
| it with shoving emojis everywhere, just like TeeSpring needs to
| stop shoving evil analytics everywhere. Not everything needs to
| have 4x emotional emphasis ffs.
| moviuro wrote:
| LOL, article is hidden when uBlock is active. Way to go!
| IncRnd wrote:
| I use NoScript and uBlock Origin in Chrome, and the article
| appears with all the images.
| pndy wrote:
| Displays fine for me - gotta be your filter lists subscriptions
| lmz wrote:
| So it's basically proving the site owner's point that they
| can't account for whatever randomness the user decides to put
| in their browser.
| infomiho wrote:
| Hey, not sure what you mean :) I use uBlock Origin in Chrome
| and the article renders okay for me?
|
| The site doesn't really use any JS other then some privacy
| friendly analytics.
| moviuro wrote:
| Ah well, I blocked all JS for your domain, that worked.
|
| The article was collapsing when I had uBlock on FFx, I only
| saw your bottom (C)opyright.
| lxe wrote:
| Low quality JavaScript shouldn't break your checkout. This is the
| type of issue that could have been caught by aggressive type
| checking.
| tantalor wrote:
| That would not help, as the externs for that type don't match
| the faked runtime object.
| rallemoose wrote:
| I've reported this to Teespring and all they reply with is to try
| another browser and clear my cookies. They won't listen. They're
| basically making Teespring unusable for the technical crowd.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| You've hit tier 1 tech support, that's likely their first
| answer to EVERY issue
| recursive wrote:
| The *adblocker crowd. I think I'm in the "technical crowd" but
| I've never used an adblocker.
|
| Running non-compliant extensions is your right, but the results
| don't need to be supported. I've run into this situation a
| number of times, although not with adblock. My advice has been
| to disable the extensions, or use a different browser without
| them.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > My advice has been to disable the extensions, or use a
| different browser without them
|
| You're leaving out the option of "not using the website."
|
| Let's face it, nothing for sale on TeeSpring is essential.
| Just thank them for putting a roadblock on your silly impulse
| buy.
| recursive wrote:
| When I'm providing support, it's for my company's
| application, and it really is essential in those cases.
| rakoo wrote:
| > non-compliant extensions
|
| Compliant to who/what exactly ? Extensions are executed in a
| _user_ agent, ie a software acting on behalf of a user based
| on the settings they prefer. If anything it 's the website
| that's non-compliant with the user's choice.
| recursive wrote:
| HTTP, HTML, CSS, ECMAscript all have formal specifications.
|
| It's your choice to use things that don't conform, such as
| IE11, but I wouldn't assume it's the server's problem.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Browsing the web without an adblocker is like running
| unpatched Windows XP on a machine exposed to the internet.
| rallemoose wrote:
| I agree. Ideally an extension never breaks a site. But if I
| were to make a store. The most robust thing in the store
| would be the checkout system. They're leaving money on the
| table considering how little work it is to test the site with
| the few popular extensions. It's basically like supporting a
| special payment method or exotic browser.
| vzaliva wrote:
| Also ad block should not break log-in process. I recently
| discovered that I could not log in to a web site unless I disable
| ad block. All core web site functionality should be tested to
| work with ad blocking. Unless you really hate your users.
| rchaud wrote:
| Adblockers block Google Analytics, which is a different script
| from the ones that are served as part of displaying banner ads.
|
| GA has an enormous set of capabilities for measuring user
| activity and e-commerce, especially because Tag Manager lets
| you assign trackable events anywhere you need to on the site.
|
| It may be interesting to see if that site works if
| 'analytics.js' and 'gtm.js' are greenlit. Those are the main GA
| scripts. Everything else would likely be ad-related.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Is the issue that the store built a checkout dependency on google
| analytics to force people to disable uBlock or attempt to force
| uBlock to allow google analytics for this domain?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It makes no sense. All these ads and tracking and all that is
| to make people buy stuff.
|
| If people are ready to give you money, don't try to stop them!
| infomiho wrote:
| I believe that it was an unintentional mistake on TeeSpring's
| end.
|
| Searching for the dummy function uBlock Origin uses for
| window.ga
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/src/web_access...
|
| This reveals that this has been in uBlock Origin since 2019.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| I've been running into this sort of thing more and more and more.
| It's crazy how many page rely on some kind of google tag manager
| event before they'll load the real content or perform the main
| function of the page.
|
| Don't all developers have ad blockers (clearly not)? I understand
| managers not testing for this, but for my own work it'd never
| load for me as a Dev, even.
| Moru wrote:
| I have this problem too. Every time I want to order something
| from a new place I have to work out what out of 50 domains
| actually needs to load in uMatrix. The funniest one is the
| garage. When I book a time for service I get a confirmation but
| when I show up at the garage on the date/time booked, they
| can't find a thing in the system. Or sometimes they just find
| an empty booking that doesn't even have my cars registration
| number. I bet it's connected to uMatrix blocking some part of
| the transaction.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| I don't have an ad blocker on my work machine. The light web
| browsing I do on that machine mainly involves docs, internal
| resources, and sites like SO -- which don't have any ads or
| have very inobtrusive banners.
| Grimm665 wrote:
| I really think we're approaching the point where this
| argument is the same as "I don't wear a seat belt when I
| drive to the corner store. It's right around the block and I
| never go above 10mph anyway."
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| I remember trying to order from a pizza place that talked to a
| third party delivery site, I hit "Order" and the browser didn't
| do anything. DevTools told me it tried to talk to the 3rd party
| using HTTP although the page was in HTTPS, and the browser
| blocked it (this was years ago when browsers started blocking
| HTTP content on HTTPS sites). Modifying the submit URL to https
| solved the problem.
|
| I found it pretty funny that I had to understand web development
| and troubleshoot the problem just to order pizza...
| npsimons wrote:
| I've gotten a little more paranoid in recent years and started
| blocking outgoing requests, just as a defense in depth. So I
| would prevent clients from connecting to anything but 22, 80
| and 443 (to start; I added more for things like WebRTC and
| Amazon Streaming which uses AWS). I found a checkout that was
| connecting over some random port and wouldn't work until that
| was unblocked. Fucking annoying and I'm just left wondering how
| long until they have a security breach through their non-
| standard proprietary bullshit.
| lainga wrote:
| Same thing happened to me with Domino's Canada. The call to
| place the order was returning a well-structured JSON error
| message (it didn't recognize the city I had entered, which was
| my suburb rather than my "post town") but the front-end wasn't
| telling me anything!
| throwawayboise wrote:
| This is why I _always_ call to order for takeout or delivery.
| I 'd say that 75% of the time I experience some kind of
| technical issues with online ordering. Just talk to the human
| at the store.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| I can't help but think of the article on posted on here
| about a week ago with the old woman who refused to order
| milk online after her service canceled phone ordering.
| thih9 wrote:
| More and more businesses are adding prerecorded responses
| and menus to their regular line. It's a matter of time
| until we completely automate delivery calls too, I guess.
| mjevans wrote:
| Then I'll either go there less and just order in person,
| or not at all.
|
| The whole reason I call is E.G. Round Table Pizza had a
| perfectly good "Web 1.0" website. Instead of updating
| some CSS rules to make it render better on mobile they
| seem to have outsourced to a third party and now
| everything performs worse and has it's own clunky hell.
| So instead of using a shit re-design on a website I just
| call on the phone.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| I've found that half the time whatever site I'm trying to
| order with doesn't work, either due to Safari, adblock, or
| whatever. Sometimes doing it in Chrome helps, but not
| always. Even if it works, I need to create an account and
| set up another email aliases for the site (since every site
| gets it's own alias).
|
| I've learned to just call orders in these days.
| brnt wrote:
| I find calling is not just for take out unreasonably
| effective.
|
| Somehow (well, we know the reasons) many websites and
| platforms require you to have a full inner model of its
| workings if you want to get things done. If you call, more
| often then not the person calling you does that work for
| you.
| admax88q wrote:
| The value add of Skip/UberEats/GrubHub is more obvious now.
| At some point it's just nice to have an app that worksz
| even if you pay a premium for it.
| dont__panic wrote:
| The killer for me is Indian places that only offer their
| mildest spiciness when you order online, but ask you for a
| spiciness level when you order on the phone. Absolutely
| brutal.
| GordonS wrote:
| Similar story with Dominoes UK, where signin doesn't (or
| didn't a couple of weeks back) work with uBlock.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Reminds me of pizzatool. Today, probably nobody under 40 would
| have ever used it.
| https://instructabest.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-story-of-sun-...
| [deleted]
| hoppla wrote:
| I tried to order something from an online store, the "place
| order" button did nothing. The json response was nice enough to
| tell me to contact their bank responsible for the payment
| integration. A part of me wonder how things would turn out if I
| followed their instructions.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| > Hi, is this pizza abc?
|
| > Yes, can I take your other?
|
| > No, you don't get it, I'd like to file a bug report, but your
| website clearly has no feature to create issues so, when the
| field city has the value...
|
| > Sir, I cannot fix the website. If you do not wish to make an
| order please hang up.
|
| > Uhoh ok, sure, I'd like an anchovies pizza but instead of
| anchovies I'd like you to make sure that when the field city is
| set to Boston...
|
| > Sir, I really cannot fix the website
|
| > Couldn't you just make a note and leave it in the front door?
| So that if other customers have the same problem they can
| upvote the most common issues and then you can prioritize fixes
| and get a reasonable budget for each one?
|
| > I obviously can't do that, do you want your anch...
|
| > Of course you can't! That would be reinventing the wheel! Let
| me point you to the github...
| vmception wrote:
| I tried to move non-software related committee meetings to
| github because I liked the collaborative process
|
| thats pretty funny to me now
| breakfastduck wrote:
| This is the most infuriating thing ever. Plus checkouts that rely
| on constant popups for authentication and confirmation which
| usually get blocked too.
|
| I basically have to switch to another browser to actually
| checkout on anything because there's so many things I'd need to
| disable to get them to work.
| Jap2-0 wrote:
| uBlock Origin commit mentioning this:
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/commit/8cd2a1d263a96421487...
| randompwd wrote:
| I also hate when sites use ever-changing 3rd party urls (e.g.
| $randomchars.cloudfront.net)
|
| Use uMatrix on a site for more than a week and annoyances will
| show themselves. Twitch is the biggest site I've found that loves
| ever changing 3rd party urls.
| devney wrote:
| Adblock doesn't break sites. If your site doesn't work with
| adblock, that means your site is broken.
|
| 27% of American internet users use adblock in some form. Better
| go check right now that you're not losing 27% of sales to it.
| DigitallyFidget wrote:
| I've used adblock for so long that I completely forget it's even
| there. Consequently, I also forget how shitty most the internet
| is without it.
|
| I never even thought about or realized that adblock may be why I
| have had issues with many different online retailers. I just
| assume "something is fukt with the site, or my browser, Vivaldi,
| is at fault" and then just buy the product elsewhere or buy a
| different/similar product instead.
| wai1234 wrote:
| Your checkout shouldn't trigger ad block. Stop slavishly bowing
| to GA everywhere. I'm about to give you money. That's the only
| 'analytic' you should care about.
|
| I'm tired of being treated as little more than a data cow, always
| ready for milking.
|
| Just. Stop.
|
| To the person who ignores people who complain because their 'non-
| standard' browsers fail on their site, why do you have a site if
| you don't care about your users accessing it? Ego much?
| adrr wrote:
| I've seen adblocks take out anti-fraud libraries, localization
| libraries, accessibility libraries. They target things they
| shouldn't.
| mjevans wrote:
| Load these things on the main website too, so it can be fixed
| on the first page, not on the checkout page. Some of us train
| the adblockers (at least locally) by whitelisting exceptions
| to the default BLOCK EVERYTHING rule / the current rules
| provided by the shared lists.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| "Anti-fraud" is just another word for spyware. If my bank
| supports 3D-Secure then your exposure to fraud is zero and
| you have no reason to stalk me for "anti-fraud" purposes.
| adrr wrote:
| No one uses 3D secure in the US. As a consumer I don't use
| 3D secure because it shifts the liability on to me. Why
| would I expose myself to that risk when using the card
| number puts all the risk on the merchant?
|
| There is also more than just unauthorized purchased. There
| is also card testers that test to see if the card is still
| valid.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| My point is that if there's zero exposure to fraud then
| the purchase should go ahead regardless of whether the
| anti-fraud libraries load or provide a negative result.
|
| So this means that users who expose the site to fraud
| must allow the anti-fraud libraries to track them, or
| switch to a bank that offers 3D-Secure so that liability
| is shifted to the bank and they no longer need to be
| tracked. Seems like a win-win situation.
|
| > There is also card testers that test to see if the card
| is still valid.
|
| Same scenario applies? If it's protected by 3D-Secure,
| who cares? The bank will end up paying the cost of it,
| not the merchant. If anything, this is a problem I'd love
| to have, as it means if I can identify those reliably I
| can keep pocketing money without even having to send out
| any actual goods.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| I worked for an e-commerce outfit for several years. Let me
| tell you they don't have massive budgets to use for R&D. Every
| last one of them uses off-the-shelf solutions, they have to,
| because they can't afford to pay a programmer to customize one
| for them. Their marketing teams work around the limitations of
| the software.
|
| And they'd be absolutely blind without GA. There's no magic
| window into customer behavior. If you were actually in a
| physical store then they could look at you through the cameras.
| This way they can know if there are basic problems with the
| store.
|
| With a website, they would have absolutely zero way to know
| what your experience of shopping there is like without a tool
| like GA. The only data they would have at all is sales numbers.
| The experience of shopping online would be immeasurably worse
| without it.
| LaGrange wrote:
| > And they'd be absolutely blind without GA.
|
| Good.
|
| > If you were actually in a physical store then they could
| look at you through the cameras.
|
| That's a gross idea to have.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| You must think a store is just a place managed by genies or
| something.
| LaGrange wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's managed by people, and doesn't need
| to constantly surveil people to function.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| No store owners I know manage their store through camera
| feed.
| mjevans wrote:
| No excuse for breaking the website with the tracking though.
| NULL is a valid field in databases for good reason.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I agree with you on the importance of GA for the e-Commerce.
| But you shouldn't actively prevent users from buying things
| because GA is not not working (in that case, because of
| uBlock).
|
| Because of the pandemic, I go to stores wearing a mask. That
| might prevent me being identified by the cameras (IDK), but
| the cashiers still sell to me.
| Beldin wrote:
| No.
|
| The standard web analytics tools of the late 90s basically
| parsed the http log. Even those will give you info equivalent
| to "looking through cameras".
|
| You might want GA, you might even need it, but you're
| absolutely not blind without it unless you choose to be so.
| rascul wrote:
| There might be other solutions besides Google, though. I'm
| not knowledgeable in the field but Matomo [0] (used to be
| Piwik) might be interesting, and there's likely other options
| which might be better in some ways.
|
| [0] https://matomo.org/
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Don't try and talk sense into the commenters here. Their use
| case is the only one that matters, and they lack the
| imagination to think that other people have different
| budgets, time, or expertise than them.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| There are people here who believe Google Analytics is the
| absolute devil, the reality is much more benign.
|
| OP saying that "I am not a data cow" is just missing the
| point. GA is logging when you visit the website, some
| interactions like clicking a link, and generally not much
| more than that. It is not indexing your hard drive or
| downloading your photos.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Go somewhere in person and there's probably orders of
| magnitude more data being collected on your activities.
| rchaud wrote:
| What if I told you that the majority of people on a checkout
| page, don't actually check out, but abandon the cart instead?
|
| "How would you even know that?" I hear you ask. Well, that's an
| interesting story....
| dawnerd wrote:
| Plenty of ways to get that data without invasive tracking
| like GA.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Is the invasive part that the data is going to GA or that
| the failure-to-close-sale is explicitly being logged at
| all?
| dawnerd wrote:
| abandoned carts are pretty commonly stored in a database
| so a followup email can be fired off later in the way.
| You don't need GA for this.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| I hate when they do that. Obviously if I've abandoned the
| cart I had a reason for it, most likely the shipping fee
| is too high. If you haven't changed it don't spam me.
| m463 wrote:
| GA? Some carts have 20 other sites they contact.
| sofixa wrote:
| > I'm about to give you money. That's the only 'analytic' you
| should care about
|
| Yeah, but who are you? Are you an impulse buyer? Returning? Did
| you spend an hour on the product page? Did you jump between 20
| different product pages?
|
| You can't deny that this kind of analytics can be very useful
| for user conversion and website design. And the site in
| question tries to do the proper thing, checking if GA works
| before trying to do stuff with it, so it wouldn't just fail if
| GA was blocked by the user.
| LaGrange wrote:
| > Yeah, but who are you?
|
| I am none of your business.
| sofixa wrote:
| You, personally, are not. You, one of a cohort, kind of
| are.
|
| If i run an e-commerce site, and see the vast majority of
| my users, but the minority of those that buy stuff, are on
| mobile and from India, maybe i need to optimise my site for
| mobile and lower-speed connections? Maybe something is
| wrong with my payment for specific currencies?
|
| If i run a blog, ans the majority of my viewers come from
| France, maybe it's time i start writing localised content
| in French?
|
| You get the gist.
| jfengel wrote:
| If you're trying to buy from me, who you are is literally
| my business.
| hire_charts wrote:
| And I'll happily fill out a form to tell you any
| information I feel is relevant to my purchase. If you
| want to covertly fingerprint and track me, I'll gladly
| take my business elsewhere.
| KeepFlying wrote:
| What I buy from you is your business. The information I
| give you to complete my transaction is your business.
|
| Who I am is not.
|
| You don't need to know if I have kids, have a disease, my
| age, my race, my gender. You don't need to know anything.
| Sure that information would help you make a better
| experience for me, I get that. But that's up to me. If I
| want a better experience, allow me to provide that
| information in exchange for the benefits that information
| gains me. But peeking over my shoulder as I walk through
| your store so that you can overanalyze everything I do
| isn't okay.
| LaGrange wrote:
| No it's not. My shipping and payment details might be, if
| I decide to buy anything. Those are not the same as "who
| I am."
| bruce343434 wrote:
| > this kind of analytics can be very useful for user
| conversion and website design
|
| Excuse my ignorance on web development, but why? How?
| gpvos wrote:
| It provides work for your marketing and sales people.
| toast0 wrote:
| Well done analytics can give the tracker a lot of
| information about if the user got there from marketting or
| other outreach, what they did on the site, and if they took
| some action that's important to the site operator (buying
| something, creating an account, posting, logging in,
| whatever), and what page was the last thing they did before
| they left.
|
| If you're selling stuff, and you notice a lot of people
| going partway through your checkout process and leaving, it
| might be a sign that something in the process isn't user
| friendly and improvement could benefit you. Especially if
| the behavior has changed recently.
|
| You might see that people come in from a marketting link
| where you thought they'd like to buy A, but they rarely buy
| A, and if they do buy something, they buy B; maybe it would
| make sense to use that link to go to the sales page for B
| instead, etc.
|
| You could even notice that people who don't run your
| javascript analytics still add things to the cart, and
| start the checkout, but never finish, and take that as
| something to investigate.
|
| This isn't a defense of Google Analytics in specific, or
| javascript analytics in general, this could be done
| serverside with just a cookie to corellate across multiple
| visits, or a session cookie within the same visit, or
| instrumenting all the links and correlating that way.
| Javascript could be used to remove tracking tags for
| copying links, but have it when clicked; great if it works,
| not the end of the world if it doesn't.
| ookware wrote:
| That's great, but all of that tracking is pointless if I
| can't actually complete the sale
| rchaud wrote:
| That's not on TeeSpring, that's on Ublock Origin, which
| replaces the GA object with a dummy. The user is running
| code on their local machine that breaks his/her own ability
| to complete the sale.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And practically speaking, the back-stop is that if uBlock
| Origin causes too many high-profile websites to break,
| it'll get a reputation for degrading user experience and
| fewer users will install it.
|
| When two independently-owned systems on the web break
| each other, "who needs to fix their stuff" is a question
| more of social networks and business politics than
| technology. TeeSpring's "fix" could be to pop a banner
| that says "WARNING: uBlock Origin breaks this site and we
| can't test for that."
| inetknght wrote:
| > _TeeSpring 's "fix" could be to pop a banner that says
| "WARNING: uBlock Origin breaks this site and we can't
| test for that."_
|
| That'd be great. Then I, as a user of uBlock Origin, can
| nope-out of the site before wasting too much of my time
| and the site's resources.
| OldTimeCoffee wrote:
| That's not how it ends up working, though. People just
| share screenshots or tell friends of the broken website
| and people stop using the website not uBO.
|
| And there are sites that will throw up a banner that says
| 'Adblockers might break this, if you have problems
| disable your Adblocker and try again' which is pretty
| effective. Funny enough, in my experience, sites with
| that banner tend to work with uBO enabled (probably
| because they're testing it).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > that's on Ublock Origin, which replaces the GA object
| with a dummy
|
| There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. The blocker
| does it because just deleting the object would let
| obnoxious websites to detect its presence and punish
| users for it.
|
| The better question is why their checkout completely
| breaks because of this. Their reliance on Google spyware
| is 100% on them and they are losing sales because of it.
| KeepFlying wrote:
| That's on the site for requiring tracking to be
| successful in order to take my money.
|
| They shouldn't require tracking to succeed in order for
| me to buy the product. If they want tracking, sure. But
| be resistant to it erroring out. Don't let errors in 3rd
| party tools prevent your user from getting their core
| goals completed.
|
| The same goes for client apps. Don't crash the app if it
| fails to log to a file. Don't crash the app if it can't
| sync your cache. Etc, etc. Don't let these unnecessary
| conveniences get in the users way.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| The checkout shouldn't rely on GA.
|
| Tracking should rely on the tracking service, not the
| checkout process
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| If your site put a selfish arrogant tracker in the way of
| completing the order... then you lost the sale. And the
| customer, who won't be coming back. I don't give a good
| god-damn about how it's "part of the site". It's not part
| of the transaction, and you put it there, and it broke
| things.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| I always try to just these things based on physical
| analogies. The clear analog for visiting an ecommerce store
| is walking into a physical store with a shopping cart. Maybe
| the physical store has cameras or some other way they track
| people. In any case they probably aren't watching every
| single customer to determine which aisles they walk down, if
| they pick up an item without putting it in their cart, etc.
| Let's say they are doing that though, for the sake of
| analogy. It's strange to me that people are ok with that, but
| let's move on..
|
| Now, since an adblocker doesn't change anything anywhere
| except on the end user's computer, the analog should be
| something on the customer's person, or some part of their
| behavior. So let's say the customer tries to avoid
| identification by wearing a hat, and they purposely grab
| every item and put it back on the shelf to mess with the data
| about their shopping habits.
|
| Do you think it makes sense for the cashier to refuse to
| checkout anyone who is wearing a hat? Or if they spotted
| someone who picked a few things up without putting them in
| their cart?
|
| Because I sure don't.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Unless you're a big or medium sized org, fixing an issue that
| is seen by less than 0.01% of visitors is probably waaay down
| the priority list on the backlog
| ianhawes wrote:
| I beg to differ, we've run into issues with ad-blocking
| before and our target audience is definitely NOT on the tech-
| savvy side.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Some critical sites I need to pay through are so fundamentally
| broken by uBlock Origin and uMatrix that I've been forced to use
| the embedded browser in the LastPass app.
|
| Since they're utility bills, credit cards, insurance portals,
| etc, I don't really have a choice not to use their services.
| rchaud wrote:
| Why not just use the default browser?
|
| FF is my main browser, so for anything behaving in a finicky
| way, I use Chrome, which doesn't have any extensions or Google
| IDs attached to it.
| priyanmuthu wrote:
| You can just disable your ad blocker for the website.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| There are some sites where I've tried fully whitelisting them
| on uMatrix, and that's enough--so I give them a dedicated
| Container Tab and use it that way. But there are others where
| even with uB0 and uM completely disabled, the site still
| refuses to let me sign in. I'm not sure if it's some
| combination of Firefox's built-in tracking protection, or the
| fact that I'm coming in through a VPN, or what: but at some
| point, rather than spending a half hour fighting with it,
| just signing in on my phone was easier.
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