EasyPrivacy oddity on website

[HeffeD]

The EasyPrivacy filter is causing some issues with the website: notalwaysright.com

If I go to the website with the filter enabled, the throbber continues to spin as if something isn't loading. Not a big deal, except for some reason this causes one core of my CPU to spike to 100% utilization.

I'm not exactly sure how blocking something could cause this situation, but the fact remains that if I disable the filter the site doesn't give me any grief. Unfortunately I don't know enough about HTML to troubleshoot this, so hopefully you guys will know what is going on.

Thanks!

[Michael]

Sad to report it's yet another idiotic implementation of Clustr Maps. Ares2, can you possibly add

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http://www2.clustrmaps.com/images/clustrmaps-back-soon.jpg

as an exception on EasyPrivacy? If two webmasters have managed to make the same error, there are bound to be more fools who have done something similar.

[HeffeD]

Ah, thanks for the name of the filter. The page lockup is apparently blocking the mouse over tooltips so I had no idea which specific filter was causing the problem. The 125,000+ hits should have been a tip off. The filter just sits there and counts when visiting the page.

Adding the exception you mention stops the excessive CPU usage. Is this bypassing the concept of the filter though? I'm not even sure what clustrmaps is, I'm assuming a web bug of sorts. Does adding an exception for the image allow whatever tracking purposes clustrmaps serves to complete its objective?

Is there a way to block the whole bit of code concerning this behavior?

[Michael]

Clustr Maps is used to track information about visitors to a site which is then made available to the owners. The filter presented does not (I think) track the users. Instead the image in the exception is there to notify users that the service is not available.

The tracking element is located at

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http://www3.clustrmaps.com/counter/index2.php?url=

This is blocked even with the exception rule I have mentioned.

Unfortunately the code causing the issue is embedded in the page and therefore cannot be blocked. Basically it tries to call an image from Clustr Maps and, if it fails, it calls a different image from Clustr Maps. As Adblock Plus blocks all images from Clustr Maps the script will continuously fail. Yet the code keeps trying. Forever.

The great problem is that I think Clustr Maps are providing the ridiculous code by default to all websites that use the service. I cannot believe that two independent websites could make the same careless mistake on the same line of code when all that connects them is the tracking provided by Clustr Maps.

[HeffeD]

I hope that is the case. Thanks for your help!

[monnawynter]

I'm having this same problem. Can someone tell me how to add an exception for "http://www2.clustrmaps.com/images/clust ... k-soon.jpg" to EasyPrivacy? All I see is Add filter and when I do that it adds the above line to My Ad Blocking Rules which doesn't stop the high cpu usage.

Should I just disable "||clustrmaps.com^$third-party" instead?

[Michael]

You need to add the filter @@||clustrmaps.com/images/clustrmaps-back-soon.jpg$image.

[monnawynter]

Thx for the tip. I was confused on where to add in the Preferences window because I thought I had to specifically be under the EasyPrivacy whitelist section (------------Exception rules to fix problems------------)

It did work but there's another problem. I use the Autopagerize greasemonkey script and when the next page loads up the cpu problem comes back. I just decided to disable ||clustrmaps.com^$third-party and be done with it. Are there any issues with disabling that?

[Michael]

||clustrmaps.com^$third-party is from EasyPrivacy; provided you don't mind the data leak to that domain there shouldn't be an issue.

[monnawynter]

Unless you know how to get around the autopaging problem I guess I can only disable the filter