Ad blocking differs from Adblock with the same rules

Today I stumpled upon this site:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Firefox-beerdigt-Plaene-fuer-Werbung-auf-Tab-Seite-2186990.html

In HTTPS Adblock complex rules are enabled. If I load above site with the Adblock extension disabled, I see several ads ("Anzeige") in the right column.

Some of the links of those ads are:

http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=28695830&iu=/6514/www.heise.de/clicktracking/usAd
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=28685510&iu=/6514/www.heise.de/clicktracking/textlink
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=28706750&iu=/6514/www.heise.de/clicktracking/textlink

I don't see those ads if Adblock is enabled. The funny thing is that both HTTPSB and Adblock seem to apply the same blocking rules.

Those are the ones used by Adblock:

http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=120x600,120x800,160x600,160x8[...] skript  /ad-emea.   
http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=300x200;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mo[...] skript  /ad-emea.   
http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=300x201;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mo[...] skript  /ad-emea.   
http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=300x250,336x280;kw=Browser,Fi[...] skript  /ad-emea.   
http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=336x200;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mo[...] skript  /ad-emea.   
http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=500x500;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mo[...] skript  /ad-emea.   
http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=728x90,468x60;kw=Browser,Fire[...] skript  /ad-emea.   
http://heise.ivwbox.de/cgi-bin/ivw/CP/ix_news;%2Fix%2Fnews%2F2186990?[...]          grafik  /cgi-bin/ivw/*  
http://www.heise.de/js/plugins/socialshareprivacy/lang/de.lang                  xmlhttprequest  /socialshareprivacy/*   
http://www.heise.de/js/plugins/socialshareprivacy/socialshareprivacy.css            css /socialshareprivacy/*   
http://heise.ivwbox.de/2004/01/survey.js                            skript  ||ivwbox.de^$third-party    
http://heise.met.vgwort.de/na/4dedaabe653c4fbdbdca1dbd6fb004ec                  grafik  ||met.vgwort.de^

And those are the requests blocked by HTTPSB (according to its statistics tab):

script  <a>     http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=728x90,468x60;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mozilla,Werbung;tile=6;ord=1790385129?
script  <a>     http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=120x600,120x800,160x600,160x800;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mozilla,Werbung;tile=7;ord=1790385129?
script  <a>     http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=300x200;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mozilla,Werbung;tile=4;ord=1790385129?
script  <a>     http://heise.ivwbox.de/2004/01/survey.js
script  <a>  http://www.heise.de/js/ho/webtrekk-v3-bundle-heise-2013-01-21.js
script  <a>     http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=300x201;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mozilla,Werbung;tile=5;ord=1790385129?
script  <a>     http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=300x250,336x280;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mozilla,Werbung;tile=2;ord=1790385129?
script  <a>     http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=336x200;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mozilla,Werbung;tile=3;ord=1790385129?
script  <a>     http://ad-emea.doubleclick.net/N6514/adj/ix/ix-inhalt;sz=500x500;kw=Browser,Firefox,Mozilla,Werbung;tile=1;ord=1790385129?
xhr <a>  http://www.heise.de/js/plugins/socialshareprivacy/lang/de.lang
css <a>  http://www.heise.de/js/plugins/socialshareprivacy/socialshareprivacy.css
image   <a>     http://heise.met.vgwort.de/na/4dedaabe653c4fbdbdca1dbd6fb004ec
image   <a>     http://heise.ivwbox.de/cgi-bin/ivw/CP/ix_news;%2Fix%2Fnews%2F2186990?r=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2F&d=54397.86098431796

Shouldn't the site look identical if both extensions block the same requests? I don't see Element Hiding Rules applied by Adblock.

[gorhill]

Never mind, I see that it did block some ads, just not all. Investigating. Which version of HTTPSB do you have? I fixed a bug last night about ABP filters not being enforced. The fix is in 0.9.1.2.

[gorhill]

Never mind, see findings below. Ok, to reproduce I need the rules in your matrix for this site. Can you paste the recipe here (using the new export recipe feature in the popup)? Also, I am guessing you have the Germany ABP filters enabled?

[gorhill]

Ok, regarding http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=28695830&iu=/6514/www.heise.de/clicktracking/usAd, this is not a downloaded resource, this is a link (the href attribute of a <a> tag).

The resource of the ad itself is http://2.f.ix.de/imgs/02/1/2/1/6/1/1/6/usAd_heise-8cba3919baa5fe77.jpg. Now I have to investigate which ABP filter is used to block this one. I suspect this must be a filter which has unsupported options.

[gorhill]

These are hidden elements. Using the real ABP, I see the image being downloaded, but not being shown. So since HTTPSB doesn't support element hiding, this is the expected behavior.

[gorhill]

This is what my tool tells me for ABP vs HTTPSB.

ABP:

host           scr img
www.heise.de    12  13  176,093
script.ioam.de       1    5,494
1.f.ix.de            1    1,455
2.f.ix.de            5   68,133
3.f.ix.de            5   49,508

HTTPSB:

host           scr img
www.heise.de    11  18  172,314
1.f.ix.de            1    1,337
2.f.ix.de            5   67,543
3.f.ix.de            5   48,918

So the images you see on the right are coming from *.f.ix.de, ABP hides these.

[gorhill]

I believe that would be the ABP filter that hides the images you see in HTTPSB:

##a[href^="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/"]

In EasyList.

[gorhill]

Try this list in ABP, https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist_noelemhide.txt, which is the one really used by HTTPSB, and the ad will not be hidden by ABP.

You are right. There were Element Hiding Rules in Easylist-Germany. So it's rather a bug in Adblock that it didn't show that such rules were triggered.

[gorhill]

Given that changed my mind yet another time, this one needs reopening, to track the progress of currently unsupported link-based cosmetic filters. (I went with the most common filters first -- next are the link-based ones).

[gorhill]

Related: #276

[gorhill]

Actually for this one, a better solution is to use a custom filter like:

heise.de##.us_ad

Maybe it could be proposed for inclusion on ABP forum?