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sandras28979200
sandras28979200
August 29, 2018
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Intelligent Tracking Prevention

  • August 29, 2018
  • 13 replies
  • 11604 views

I was contacted by the IT Team at my office and they said Firefox is implementing a feature to set DNT as a default which will prevent DTM/Launch from firing. We have all our vendor tags and analytics tags in Launch. Does this mean we will not be able to track our customers anymore if they use Firefox? Can anyone help us with this? Thanks

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Best answer by Gigazelle

I downloaded and installed the latest nightly build, and here's my findings:

  • Tracking was not affected on my test site, which uses the latest version of the Analytics AppMeasurement library and Experience Cloud ID service.
  • Tracking was blocked when I opened a private browsing window.
  • When I opened Firefox tracking protection settings, by default it was set to private browsing only. When I changed it to say always, Analytics tracking was blocked.
  • Going to a site with first-party image request CNAME redirects, tracking still worked, even with tracking protection enabled.

When Adobe Analytics was blocked, it showed this in the console:

The resource at “http://assets.adobedtm.com/launch-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.min.js” was blocked because content blocking is enabled.[Learn More]

Loading failed for the <script> with source “http://assets.adobedtm.com/launch-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.min.js”.

Following the linked article, it says this tracking protection in private windows has been around since version 42, so since 2015. I'm guessing the 'always' option is new, however it's not enabled by default.

If you're concerned that Mozilla will switch tracking protection to 'always' by default, an option would be to ensure you're using a first-party implementation via CNAME redirects. However, given the number of sites that have dependencies on tracking libraries, the likelihood of this happening is pretty slim in my opinion.

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10558716
Level 3
November 12, 2018

Gigazelle​

Do you have any update on your findings given the latest release of Firefox?

As per this Mozilla blog post, I think that Mozilla aims to block all cookies (and other site storage) from known "trackers" (Adobe Analytics, for our purposes) from "early 2019" (I understand this means v65 of Firefox).

If this is a correct interpretation, does it mean that Adobe Analytics will not function in any useful manner for anyone with a CNAME redirect (e.g., "metrics.mycompany.com" for "www.mycompany.com")?

Gigazelle
Adobe Employee
GigazelleAdobe Employee
Adobe Employee
November 12, 2018

If you're using any kind of third-party cookie (cookie TLD doesn't match URL TLD), then you will basically be reverting to a fallback cookie method. For example, metrics.example.com is your cookie domain www.example.org - since example.com and example.org are different TLD's, the cookie will be blocked, and Analytics falls back to a first-party cookie.

If you're using CNAME redirects (metrics.example.com on www.example.com), my research shows that neither Mozilla or Apple touches those cookies. If you're hosting the AppMeasurement JS file on your own domain (without Launch/DTM), then you even get through content blocked by private browsing.

If you're using the Experience Cloud ID service, those cookies aren't generally affected either since they are first party. They are currently blocked by private browsing, though, since Launch/DTM is currently on their list of tracking domains. Cross-site tracking capabilities are also disabled, since the ID service uses a demdex cookie to enable cross-site tracking (and that cookie is the prime target of both Mozilla and Apple).

I logged in to Analytics and ran a trended report over the past month for this forum's metrics with a Firefox-only segment, and none of the metrics I looked at were affected, not even by a tiny bit. The report suite I'm looking at uses the Experience Cloud ID service. The latest version should not affect any tracking, as long as there are measures in place to fall back to a first-party cookie. Cross-site tracking capabilities are absolutely affected, so unique visitors are not deduplicated across domains for Firefox/Safari users. This makes perfect sense, since that is Mozilla's/Apple's aim with these browsing features.

K
kuldipj
Level 2
August 20, 2019

Hi Everyone,

just to add here as with recent changes in Firefox regarding the content blocking if you choose the custom option and block the trackers in all windows then Analytics call/image will not fire. by-default standard option is selected so in that case, tracking will be disabled in private window but if user choose the custom option as per below screenshot then DTM/Launch call will not fire.

@BarryLennon Gigazelle

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