Comments for Website blocks Firefox users due to Ad Blocker

Website blocks Firefox users due to Ad Blocker

2007-08-24T14:45:44Z

According to InfoWorld, a blogger is blocking Firefox users from visiting his site in protest of the 2nd most popular Firefox plugin called AdBlock Plus, which strips banner advertisements from websites. His rationale is that when you use an advertisement blocker you are stealing.

According to InfoWorld, he stated, "Accessing the content while blocking the ads therefore would be no less than stealing," wrote Danny Carlton, a Web site designer and author, who runs both sites. JackLewis.net is his personal blog site. "Millions of hard working people are being robbed of their time and effort by this type of software," he added in a posting on the Why Firefox is Blocked Web site.

When you go to http://jacklewis.net/weblog/ using Firefox you are redirected to http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/index1.php. I figured he was blocking Firefox simply by the user agent string, which tells the remote web server which browser you are using. Knowing there are several popular plugins to change your Firefox user agent quickly on the fly, I figured this guy must be an idiot for trying to block Firefox users.

I changed my user agent in Firefox to Internet Explorer 7.0's user agent and went back to his page. I was still redirected to the whyfirefoxisblocked.com page. Hmmmm. Interesting - he's not detecting user agent strings to block Firefox. That is the most common way to block a specific browser.

Curious, I did some more digging. I talked with Vahid Hashemian, TMC's webmaster and developer about this. We looked at the HTML source code and Vahid immediately saw the problem. In his HTML he has this code:

Internet Explorer and even Opera returns a value for document.all, however Firefox does not. Since the '!' means "not" and Firefox does "not" return a value, it redirects the browser to http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/. So then Vahid and I got to thinking. How could we get past this code? I knew there were plenty of plugins that let you block certain strings of HTML code. So in theory, you could replace this string of HTML with "null". Greasemonkey is one of the most popular Firefox plugins that is very extensible. Using some simple Javascript code in Greasemonkey you can easily strip out this code.

You may wonder why I would go through all that trouble just to access someone's website using Firefox. I guess you could say it's part ego and part fun. He tried to stop me from doing something, so human nature is to find ways around it. It's the challenge of it all. Well, I'm off to read Jack's blog using Firefox - minus all the banner ads. Ahhh, such sweet satisfaction!

Comment from Doug on 2007-08-26

2007-08-26T18:55:10Z

That is weak. IE has no featured and no pluggins. There are so many features that firefox comes with out the box. IE is just not good.

Jb
Astawerks VoIP Hardware Sales

Comment from snuffi on 2007-08-27

2007-08-27T10:14:02Z

The line of argument - in my opinion - is flawed. Arguing that not watching someone's ads is stealing cannot be meant seriously. What happens next? Some TV Station sueing my for grabbing a beer while they broadcast their ads (free TV is paid for by ads, so every viewer MUST watch alle the ads or they'd be stealing).
What about ads in magazines? Am I stealing because I flip to the next page without even realizing what company that ad was for?

And if someone starts arguing now that Internet is different because I use automated means to suppress ads then I have to reply that they also use automation to maximize their effect via pop-ups, etc. In a magazine I just flip a page, if the website uses means to get more ads into my face then I will use means to prevent them from doing just that...

Comment from chaz on 2007-08-28

2007-08-28T20:04:03Z

We agree, people have a right to block ads.Period.We at wibiki have created a server-side adblocker and have imbedded a social community in the ad space.Our motto is "make ad space your space".Check it out and tell us what yo think, KEEP BLOCKING becuase USERS RULE!!!

Comment from Zach Wise on 2007-08-28

2007-08-28T21:24:38Z

This is the beauty of capitalism and freedom of speech. If the owner of the site wants to block Firefox, fine. But he'll have to suffer the consequences. If a site that I want to visit is going to block me because I use a particular browser, that's fine, I'll just take my business/audience elsewhere.

Comment from helmus on 2007-09-01

2007-09-01T17:23:58Z

Hello guys,
What code should i use in greasemonkey in order to remove the redirect?

Comment from jl on 2007-09-11

2007-09-12T00:15:59Z

lynx still works. game on.

Comment from Thomas K on 2007-09-12

2007-09-12T12:41:23Z

It seems that he's now reverted to an even simpler system, merely changing the user agent string now works.

Reading through the website, it's fairly obvious that Mr Carlton (aka Jack Lewis) is not the brightest of people. In between some rather dumb entries on his blog, we find a chapter of his novel...

To be fair, it could be worse. The spelling and grammar are alright, and it didn't go into the evangelical rant against modern society that I was half expecting. But a quick read of that chapter does not suggest that this man should spend his life writing novels.

Comment from zubair on 2008-08-23

2008-08-23T21:30:27Z

Thank you
for the html code to block firefox users
I been looking for it for long time.
Thank you
firefox just sucks

Comment from SneakyWho_am_i on 2008-10-06

2008-10-06T08:08:25Z

In firefox:
- we don't have to go through proprietary objects like activex just to do a simple thing like xmlhttp request -- on the contrary, we do it like every other browser out there except IE.
(IE does not support AJAX properly even though Microsoft invented the now standardized technique)
- we've never had to write page after page of code to load external programs just to display images properly. In fact no image-capable browser that I know of has ever forced web designers to do this.. Except IE. (IE6 requires external programs to load PNG images properly)
- We don't have to set long, drawn-out values on proprietary properties to do simple things like lowering the opacity of elements. No? No, we can just set opacity in very well documented CSS, like any other browser -- except IE of course. (CSS filters are not part of any standard, it would be nice if IE's opacity filter could be aliased through the proper way)
- It's OK to set gamma in PNGs, they will still be displayed using the correct shading on web pages -- same as any other browser -- Oh, except IE (which will apply PNG gamma and not allow gamma to be set on the document, so that gamma in PNGs breaks the page presentation)
- We can already use a good part of HTML5, including canvas, without plugins -- same as every other modern, graphical browser -- oh, except IE (which has to load the excanvas plugin from google/mozilla in order to use this functionality)
- we have just as many vendor-specific properties as anyone else, and of course they're prefixed as the w3c recommends -- just like every other browser -- oh, except IE, which instead pollutes the css namespace with garbage as a joke
- we can view XHTML documents as XML, just like every other browser - oh, except Internet Explorer, how about that? (xhtml served as text/html is not xhtml, just invalid html)
- we can include html tags in our .txt files and serve them as text/plain, without the browser interpreting them incorrectly as HTML -- same as any other browser -- except IE
- we've been able to use pseudo-classes with all of the appropriate elements -- odd that IE6 was at the time the only browser to not support these properly even though it was a Microsoft invention
- we can use pseudo classes such as :before and :after, and don't need to clutter our page with a lot of unnecessary markup -- same as all other browsers except IE, which is oblivious to them and feels we should have to mix presentation with behaviour with layout. It should be noted that Opera and I think Safari have far better support for generated content than what Firefox has, but at least we have the basics. Internet Explorer, why are you stuck in the nineties?

Zubair, I don't mean to disagree, Firefox in many respects has some catching up to do with Safari and Opera, and it's fair to say in light of those that it sucks.

But if you're blocking Firefox because "it sucks", then I hope you're also blocking seriously deficient browsers like Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and internet Explorer 8 -- which suck a lot more than what Firefox does.

Internet Explorer is crippled in so many ways that as web designers we spend more time trying to make it behave than what we do writing normal code for normal browsers. These are not web design problems, they are simple problems that can easily be solved by a programmer in Redmond - however, after a decade, most of these buga still exist in IE7 and IE8 - and none of them have been solved in IE6.

We should not have to waste so much energy making up for Washington programmers' inadequacies - and in fact, if we do it by choice, then we are foolish for doing so as it only encourages others to use such a bad browser.

Comment from CompCentral on 2008-11-18

2008-11-19T04:33:21Z

From my experience it's just the opposite. Most of the code I write does not work properly in Firefox but it works as expected in IE. Firefox is horrible if you are trying to secure and lockdown a site. For instance, I am creating an online test taking site using javascript/php/mysql that uses javascript to disallow certain things to thwart cheating but using Firefox renders most of this inneffective. I have no choice but to disable Firefox completely using the above code as well as a group policy hash block in active directory.

Does anyone know of any other ways to effectively block Firefox and plugins such as the one mentioned?

Comment from Bob on 2009-05-05

2009-05-06T03:26:18Z

"Does anyone know of any other ways to effectively block Firefox and plugins such as the one mentioned?"

Yea, program using W3C standards instead of using IExplore specifi Javascript. If you think it's FF that is broken:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3#Desktop_browsers

Even the built-in KDE browser (equivalent of the Internet Explorer) score 6 times in the Javascript compliance.

Comment from Mr Logic on 2009-05-11

2009-05-11T13:22:38Z

Your examples doesn't make any sence. If you want to view TV without ads, you need to BUY the movie.

Maybe you flip the page in the magazine. But you DID see there was an ad, and subconsiouncly you always read what's there.

The same for sites, it is not like you are actually reading the acts, but you just notice them subcounsiouncly.

These sites are kind enough to publish their content for free, trying to pay back their costs with ad revenue.

But then some childish logicly moron comes by, using an ad blocker and says: "I have a right to block ads", well in that case I guess you actually never thought about it and just said it was logical because it was in your advantage.

And yes, you can be sued by TV companies if you block their ads.

Comment from Zulummar on 2009-07-26

2009-07-27T03:57:48Z

@Mr Logic: Let's start poking holes for you...

"If you want to view TV without ads, you need to BUY the movie"
Well, TV isn't always movies. What about DVRs where you skip through the ads and don't even see them? Those have been deemed perfectly legal. What about taping shows on VCRs and fast forwarding through the commercials? That was deemed perfectly legal, AND upheld as a RIGHT the consumer had.

"But you DID see there was an ad" - correct
"and sunconsciously you always read what's there" - absolutely, 100%, unequivocably FALSE. That's the whole subliminal messaging theory, which has been debunked time and time again. You may glimpse the ad, you may even see it long enough to know what company it's for, or what type of product it's for, or even what specific product it's for... depending on the type of ad... but subconsciously reading the whole ad is a crock and a farse, it does not happen.

"These sites are kind enough to publish their content for fee, trying to pay back their costs with ad revenue"
Some, yes, are just trying to recoup some costs with ad revenue. Some are companies (like geocities way back when) giving people free sites for blogs and crap, and then littering up their pages with ads. They're in the business of giving away "free" websites to get people to publish content for them, to attract visitors to drown with tons of ads for revenue. Some are people who got a free site and HAVE NO COSTS, and are putting ads up to make money off their blog or whatever.

I doubt anyone, other than maybe you, is naive enough to believe that any free site out there with ads is just someone doing something out of the kindness of their heart and trying to recoup some of their costs.

Yes, it is certainly their right to put ads up, or whatever they want, up on their pages. However, there have also been PLENTY of cases of malicious coded flash, javascript, etc. ads that get placed on ad networks cause the ad company doesn't screen them, then they get displayed to unsuspecting users, the malicious code runs, and now the viewer has problems. So, YES, it is MY EFFING RIGHT to block ANY content that comes in to MY equipment.

If people want to make money off their websites, they can make them subscription websites if they don't like people blocking their ads. Period. My Computers, My network, My screen, yes, I have every right to block ANYTHING I don't bloody well want being delivered or rendered.

Comment from chrisl on 2009-09-09

2009-09-09T08:50:19Z

These sites are kind enough to publish their content for free, trying to pay back their costs with ad revenue.
These sites are kind enough
These sites are KIND enough

did I heard mr logic nominating sites filled with doubleclick's popup-ads for a humanitarian award??
lmao jeez what a moron.

lemme tell you something, kid.
you CAN'T sell web content. period
in the past that has been tried, it never works (well maybe, just on porn sites)
if you want people to visit your site, it has to be open for everyone with no charge.
they are not 'kind', they just can't sell it, they just don't have an option.
except bombing your with ads
and no, you can't be sued for blocking TV ads LOCALLY.
if you go to the tv studio and do sothing to their equiptment in oder to block their ads from their signal, hell yeah, you'll get on jail
but if you block them locally (that is, only on your tv set)
no, they can't do anything
when you watch tv and theres a tv commercial, and you change the channel, guess what are you doing? you are blocking their ads on you screen!!!
you may say 'im not blocking them, im just not seeing them' exactly!
thats what adblock does, the ads are there, you just dont see them

mr ilogic, when you dont see all the ads in a tv show you are watching, you are stealing, so, sit like a dork and enjoy a nice session of brain washing marketing ;)

Comment from Joeychgo on 2009-10-05

2009-10-06T03:12:55Z

Just something I would like to point out...

There are many people who have popular websites that are free to the user. Especially enthusiast websites like automobile forums and other vBulletin and Wordpress installations.

I myself ow 3 dedicated servers which house several enthusiast forums.

How do you think they pay for the associated costs? How do you think I paid for my servers and the monthly datacenter fees?

Advertisements.

If this kind of plugin were to become popular enough to prevent most advertisements from reaching the end user then guess what... Alot of free content will go away or no longer be free.

I notice there are plenty of ads on this Blog. Whats good for the goose isnt good for the gander? Using this kinf of plugin is shortsided and selfish.