GMX (gmx.com) made unusable by ABP

[SeL]

I've just found that I can not log into my account at the webmail site GMX.com (not to be confused with gmx.net, their service for the German speaking countries). After supplying the correct login data, the secondary window that they use for webmail appears, but is stuck at the message "Loading GMX Mail (module 1)". My filter subscriptions are EasyElement, EasyPrivacy, and "Filter von Dr.Evil". I found I needed to include the following exceptions to make it work:

@@|https://mail-eu.gmx.com/us/cgi/g.fcgi/m ... fier/login
@@|http://mail-eu.gmx.com/us/cgi/g.fcgi/mi ... fier/login

Sorry for being unable to find out which filter subscription caused the problem, but I thought I'd share my exception in the hope that others can use it, or maybe the filter authors even take it up.

[SeL]

Better make that "mail-*" instead of "mail-eu". They have "mail-us" too, if not more.

[rick752]

Sorry for being unable to find out which filter subscription caused the problem, but I thought I'd share my exception in the hope that others can use it, or maybe the filter authors even take it up.

Which filter authors?
Afaict, I see nothing in the Easy subscriptions that would block those strings to begin with.

[Ares2]

@SeL: I don't have an account there (and I can't create one because they send me to gmx.at ) but can you test if it works when you remove your 2 exception rules and use

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@@.google-analytics.com/ga.js$domain=gmx.com

instead?

[Dr. Evil]

I can't find anything in my list either.

@SeL: We need to know the responsible filter, or at least the complete address of what's blocked.
http://adblockplus.org/en/getting_start ... -positives

[SeL]

Sorry for not replying earlier. I didn't expect such quick responses. :-)

@rick752 (and all):
I had named my three subscriptions. Some news: the "culprit" filter is EasyPrivacy. I just rechecked, deleting all my custom filters and selectively disabling my subscriptions. The result was very clear. Sorry for not realising earlier that I could do this.

@Ares2:
I'm in Germany and signed up using a US proxy. :-) Once you've signed up, you can let go of the proxy and use the login form displayed on the version of gmx.com that is delivered to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Welcome to 5 GB and IMAP access ...

Replacing my rules with the one you suggested made the exact same problem reappear.

@Dr.Evil:
The URLs I quoted in my first post are the exact URLs. I found them using Live HTTP Headers. They were followed by GET parameters only.

[rick752]

I wish you could tell me what rule is causing that.

Anyway, does whitelisting the site help?

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@@/mail-eu.gmx.com/*$document

[SeL]

Sorry, I didn't know Adblock Plus well enough to find out which rule fires. (Now I do, see below.) I had tried Ctrl+Shift+V but the results were inconclusive to me. I was hoping that by telling you the URL that I had found and created a working exception for, you would be able to find the problem, with your knowledge of the filter. But I did make one decisive mistake in my earlier report. I have now reset all hit statistics, run another unsuccessful login and opened the EasyPrivacy subscription to see if there is a hit counter above zero next to any of its rules. The rule /Logger? had a count of 1. I then rechecked the URLs for a successful login that I had found via Live HTTP Headers, and realised that I had indeed cut off the final part of the URL when I made my previous rule. I must simply have made a mistake when I deleted the GET parameters, because I had wanted my rule to be as specific as possible. But the URL that gets blocked is in fact

https://mail-eu.gmx.com/us/cgi/g.fcgi/m ... id=***&id=***

I've replaced the values with "***" for anonymisation. My sincere apologies for forgetting that vital part in my first report.

Also, I ran another attempt with my rule(s) replaced by the one suggested by rick752, after clearing the cache and restarting the browser to be sure. This also worked (i.e. solved the problem). But I'd always suggest to also allow for mail-us.gmx.com (if not more variations) because they seem to deliver their pages from both of these servers.

Could it be a good idea to add a section about checking hit statistics to the "Getting started" page that Dr.Evil pointed me to? Because the only tool I did find there, Ctrl+Shift+V, was not helpful at all. Here is what Ctrl+Shift+V gives me in the webmail window while it is trying to load but not succeeding:

https://images.gmx.net/images/outsource ... der_bg.png
https://images.gmx.net/images/outsource ... n/logo.png
https://images.gmx.net/images/outsource ... pinner.gif

These are all in black. You can probably see why I called that inconclusive. Maybe that's because the window in which the problem occurs is a separate window opened in the login process (not prevented by the Firefox popup blocker) in which a heavily AJAX-based user interface is loaded. I came up with the idea to reset hit statistics after some more thinking.

[rick752]

First:
Disable the original @@whitelist rule I gave you.

Find the rule:

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/Logger?

that is in the EasyPrivacy subscription and uncheck the box next to it (disables that rule) ... then hit "Apply".

See if that fixes it.

[SeL]

Yes, that is another way of fixing it.

I hope there won't be too many further rounds of tests before EasyPrivacy is amended. :-)

[rick752]

It's now amended.

Update the EP .... should work ok now I hope. I just needed to know if it was indeed that string that was the problem. I "excepted" gmx.com from using that rule.

[SeL]

Yes, it works without custom exceptions now, thanks very much indeed!

And sorry for that slight display of impatience earlier. Soon after I posted it I felt it wasn't right to comment in that way, you were clearly trying to ensure you were getting it right. Who am I to not support that effort.

[Douge3]

I accidentally disabled pop up's from gmx.com and now every time I close the browser or change address the "logout is successful" pop up always comes up.