Firefox NoScript Blocked by Yahoo Web Mail

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Yahoo Web Mail has this week added to their anti-ad blocking arsenal “client side Galaxy”. This application prevents access to Firefox users who are using AdBlock Plus or NoScript. It’s time to teach Yahoo a lesson — cancel all your accounts. I certainly am considering doing this. And stop using their search engine and other services. There are far better alternatives.

Edit: I should have stated: when Ad Block Plus AND NoScript are both present. Just using NoScript seems not to be enough to trigger Galaxy’s blocking behaviors. See below.

-- rc primak

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Yahoo Web Mail has this week added to their anti-ad blocking arsenal “client side Galaxy”. This application prevents access to Firefox users who are using AdBlock Plus or NoScript.

My access doesn’t seem to be blocked (using NoScript). Perhaps there’s a particular combination of permissions required in order to be blocked, or perhaps this hasn’t rolled out to my mailbox yet?

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My access doesn’t seem to be blocked (using NoScript). Perhaps there’s a particular combination of permissions required in order to be blocked, or perhaps this hasn’t rolled out to my mailbox yet?

Do you use AdBlock Plus or Super AdBlocker? These are the real targets of Yahoo’s new policy. Galaxy is triggered only when Ad Blocking Extensions are detected.

Thanks for the reply. This may help clarify the situation as I continue to persue it with Yahoo and some other on line communnities, as well as here in The Lounge.

FYI, I am a paying Yahoo Mail Plus subscriber, so this could escalate beyond what a free Yahoo user could expect by way of a response from Yahoo. POP-3 downloading through an e-mail client is not affected in my case.

-- rc primak

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Do you use AdBlock Plus or Super AdBlocker? These are the real targets of Yahoo’s new policy. Galaxy is triggered only when Ad Blocking Extensions are detected.

No, I just have NoScript. I don’t need any additional ad blocking.

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I agree with the part about not needing a separate ad blocker with NoScript. But I have a plugin called Super AdBlocker, from the makers of Super Antispyware. It is not user configurable. Even with this plugin disabled, NoScript has been producing these Galaxy conflicts at Yahoo MailPlus. Unless I first log in through my Yahoo Profile and unblock all relevant scripts there first, access to my Yahoo Mail Plus web mail can get intercepted and blocked. So Galaxy seems sometimes to conflict with just NoScript, with only Avast and Comodo Firewall active for security (no actual ad blocking).

I have decided that, while inconvenient as heck, this conflict is not insurmountable, and I can eventually get in to my Yahoo web mail. It’s just that Yahoo has through their use of Galaxy, targeted Firefox users and not just those using AdBlock Plus or other actual ad blocking extensions. This seems very unfair, perhaps to the point where a formal complaint to Yahoo could result. I leave that decision to Mozilla.org and the writers of AdBlock Plus and NoScript. Let them hash this out, I say.

Just as long as there is some workaround I can use, I will grumble a lot, but I will continue to use Yahoo Mail Plus. After all, most of the time I just go into the web mail to cull out the ad mail (from folks I do business with, so technically this is not spam) and the use Eudora 8, Beta 9 to download and store my real e-mail on my computer. Then just delete the web mail from the server. My only other use for Yahoo now is Yahoo Groups, where a computer user group I belong to has a bulletin board, and to monitor and reply to comment threads here in The Lounge and elsewhere. Except for Yahoo Groups, all of this can just as easily be handled through my Google gMail account.

If I get ambitious, I may try completely removing Super AdBlocker and see if that helps. But for now, that seems like a lot of work for uncertain benefits.

-- rc primak

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Update: Now it is not as bad as before. Yahoo Web Mail is still requiring a few scripts to be run when NoScript is encountered, but access is no longer dead-ended completely. I still don’t like going through an extra step or two to get into my Yahoo web mail, but things are considerably improved over the point I originally was posting about.

-- rc primak

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I recently ran fowl of Yahoo mail by running my Trillian Chat program in Kaspersky’s Sand Box, hehe, Trillian notifies new mail in Yahoo and had been opening yahoo from that notice. The other day Yahoo would no longer load correctly and thought showed Inbox it wouldn’t load so have since had to open new browser not running in Sand Box. I run IE in the sand box but have Firefox set as default, opening Firefox from within Trillian loads FireFox in Sand Box, seems can’t do that any more. Yahoo is surely the worst free mail service, have thought that since they deleted all my photo they had promised could have free upload for them, YAHOO Yahoo

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I recently ran fowl of Yahoo mail by running my Trillian Chat program in Kaspersky’s Sand Box, hehe, Trillian notifies new mail in Yahoo and had been opening yahoo from that notice. The other day Yahoo would no longer load correctly and thought showed Inbox it wouldn’t load so have since had to open new browser not running in Sand Box.

Have you raised this issue with Yahoo? You may not be the only person using that combination of programs.

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I recently ran fowl of Yahoo mail by running my Trillian Chat program in Kaspersky’s Sand Box, hehe, Trillian notifies new mail in Yahoo and had been opening yahoo from that notice. The other day Yahoo would no longer load correctly and thought showed Inbox it wouldn’t load so have since had to open new browser not running in Sand Box. I run IE in the sand box but have Firefox set as default, opening Firefox from within Trillian loads FireFox in Sand Box, seems can’t do that any more. Yahoo is surely the worst free mail service, have thought that since they deleted all my photo they had promised could have free upload for them, YAHOO Yahoo

Have you raised this issue with Yahoo? You may not be the only person using that combination of programs.

Both of you are apparently not aware of Yahoo’s policy about proxy servers. You are not allowed to access free Yahoo accounts via a proxy. That is to block Y-POPS and other pseudo-POP-3 clients from stealing POP-3 access to Yahoo free accounts (which do not have POP-3 access). You have to pay for a Mail Plus Account (like mine) to get POP-3 access legitimately. But even with paid Mail Plus accounts, proxy servers may still be blocked, especially ones which do not transfer the Yahoo ads along with the mail. Maybe Trillian Chat is also preventing Yahoo from fingerprinting your “browser” through which their services are being accessed. This information is being used now to target ads to free Yahoo customers. Still, I think the problem is that the ads are being blocked when Trillian Chat is used in this way.

I seriously doubt that the Yahoo Mail Team will improve their behaviors on these points anytime soon. The company is still hemorrhaging money, and the prospects for a friendly merger or takeover are looking pretty dim right now. Bing has not proven to be a profitable search partner, so we can all just hope we continue to get anything from Yahoo for a little while longer.

But, making our discontent heard is always our right, especially we who are paying for premium accounts.

If you want better Web Mail and POP-3 services, try an e-mail specialist. I’m using Fastmail.fm. They have free IMAP access and paid POP-3 access. And no ads and thus no games with browsers or add-ons. But the company is being merged or taken over, so prices may go up soon, and the free accounts may disappear.

-- rc primak

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