InformAction Forums

Using certain other Firefox add-ons to block Yahoo Analytics http://d.yimg.com/mi/ywa.js breaks many videos on http://news.yahoo.com and has tended to break some other sites as well. ( ywa.js exceptions to filtering in ABP and to blocking in Ghostery are required to obtain some content. )

If possible, it would be nice to have a surrogate in NoScript for this tracker.

ywanomore wrote:Using certain other Firefox add-ons to block Yahoo Analytics

I'm sorry, we cannot be responsible for what other add-ons do. Or create surrogates for other add-ons' use.

Here's a radical idea: Try using NoScript to block scripts.

In NS Options > Advanced > ABE, add this to the USER box: On Firefox 9.01, allow or temp-allow yahoo.com, yimg.com, and yahooapis.com (They're in the default whitelist anyway.)
Allow cookies from news.yahoo.com (session-only are fine).
Allow the blocked object (video) by clicking on the placeholder (red/blue NS icon), assuming that you have all NS Options > Embeddings checked. If "Apply these restrictions to whitelisted sites too" is unchecked, you probably won't need this step.

If you have the RequestPolicy add-on, you'll have to allow multiple requests, but only within the various Yahoo subdomains and relations (yimg, yahooapis, etc.). No cross-site requests (to other domains outside of Yahoo) are required. It may take several page refreshes until they all show. If you watch these videos regularly, you may wish to add these permissions to RP's whitelist.

The videos load and play fine. Checking in JSView add-on, the script shows a size of: ??? -- and trying to read the script results in a blank window.

Thus comfirming that the script you don't want is in fact not getting through.
No surrogate needed.

@Tom T., I believe your ABE rule does block ywa.js in Firefox.

However, like other methods of preventing that script from running, here your ywa.js ABE rule breaks content on certain webpages, such as many news videos on yahoo provided by various parties other than yahoo. Know that I tried your rule with various combinations of add-ons, including no (other) blocking or filtering add-ons engaged, and tested on different computers, different operating systems, etc.; with scripts globally allowed by NoScript, and with scripts generally blocked by NoScript.

I understand your experience may be dissimilar. If I fiddle with a broken page for 5 minutes or so, e.g., turning globally allowed on, off and on again, etc, eventually sometimes the videos play, but that isn’t a reasonable user experience.

ywanomore wrote:@Tom T., I believe your ABE rule does block ywa.js in Firefox.

However, like other methods of preventing that script from running, here your ywa.js ABE rule breaks content on certain webpages, such as many news videos on yahoo provided by various parties other than yahoo....

If you could be so kind as to point me to several specific examples of such videos or web pages, I'll try to adapt the rule accordingly. I had no trouble on several news.yahoo.com videos, of which some number surely were provided by other parties?

If in fact it proves impossible to block it without breaking some pages, then yes, a RFE for a surrogate is justified.
Thank you.