Archive for the 'browsers' Category
August 30th, 2008 - IE8 and inPrivate Blocking
So, IE8 beta 2 was released. One of the new features is the inPrivate Browsing and inPrivate Blocking. Reading the comments on the ie blog, shows comments both for and againts the inPrivate Blocking. There seems to be much fear that this is going to cause problems with displaying ads on webpages. But after playing around with IE8 beta 2, I don’t think it is going to cause much problems.
The main reason is because of how most online ad agencies and tracking companies name their ads/pixels. It appears that the algorithm to determine if an item should be blocked is based on the filename. If you take a look at a doubleclick request, it will look something like: (these are two live examples I found)
http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/abtl.home/;kw=fms;info=22111;u=22111;sz=586×90;ord=23946755?
http://ad.doubleclick.net/activity;src=1142700;type=ivill675;cat=gotoi382;ord=8636919891878.148?
Notice the filename (the part in bold). There is no similarity and in fact it looks like there never will be. It looks like Doubleclick passes the parameters through the filename instead of the query string. This means that DoubleClick is perfectly safe from inPrivate Blocking.
In fact, most of the trackers or ad agencies appear to use random or distinct file names. The only obvious one that doesn’t appear to do this is google analytics. Their requests are:
http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?
http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js
http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js