ember-detect-tracking-protection

Addon made to help detect Firefox's tracking protection feature which is based off of Disconnect. This addon may also be used to detect similar featured plugins that a user may install to their browser like uBlock Origin.

Installation

ember install ember-detect-tracking-protection

What is Tracking Protection?

Tracking can be described as the collection of a person's browsing data across a multitude of websites. Tracking Protection prevents services from utilizing tracking usually by intercepting the request and blocking it. Firefox and browser extensions such as uBlockOrigin utilize Tracking Protection but in different ways.

Firefox uses a list provided from Disconnect to decide what domains/services they intercept. Currently by default, Firefox does not turn on Tracking Protection for normal browsing but, in it's Private Browsing mode it is active. This is an option in the browser settings that users can have Tracking Protection at all times.

Ads are gone, why should I care?

Tracking Protection goes beyond the blocking of ads. For instance, those who use a tag manager such as Google Tag Manager, which can be used for the addition of JavaScript functionality to your application or website, GTM is blocked as well.

This is why this addon exists. To provide a second course of action when a service that you expect to be present, is not for some users due to Tracking Protection, extensions, or similar interceptors.

Usage

Basic Component Setup using Mixin

import Component from '@ember/component';
import Detect from 'ember-detect-tracking-protection/mixins/detect';

export default Component.extend(Detect, {
  detectResolved(hasTrackingProtection) {
    --Do Something--
  }
});

• detectResolved() is called once when the component is initialized or when the mixin resolves the answer
• detectResolved() passes a boolean parameter if the browser has tracking protection

Using the Service

detect: service('detect-tp')

There is a detect-tp service that you can tap into. Here are the following methods you can utilize off of it.

• hasTrackingProtection() - returns a boolean if the browser the user is using has Tracking Protection. It will return null if the detection has yet to be resolved.
• isDoNotTrack() - Returns a boolean if the user's browser doNotTrack Setting for the browser. This does not mean it has tracking protection on, but used as a signal.
• ping(url[, noCache=true]) - Pass a custom resource url to see if the browser is blocking it. It will return a promise and resolve if the browser loads it, and rejects when it will not load.

There is a few public variables as well

• isBlocked - Returns a Boolean if Tracking Protection is enabled on a browser. default is false while it resolves
• hasChecked - Returns a Boolean if the service has resolved or not the static, standard asset.

Other Utilities

• isDoNotTrack - Direct import of the above isDoNotTrack (const) in case you do not want to load in the service

import { isDoNotTrack } from 'ember-detect-tracking-protection/utilities/detect';

Other Resources

• Disconnect list of blocked domains for Firefox

Contributing

Installation

• git clone git@github.com:joshsearles/ember-detect-tracking-protection.git
• cd ember-detect-tracking-protection
• npm install

Linting

• npm run lint:js
• npm run lint:js -- --fix

Running tests

• ember test – Runs the test suite on the current Ember version
• ember test --server – Runs the test suite in "watch mode"
• ember try:each – Runs the test suite against multiple Ember versions

Running the dummy application

• ember serve
• Visit the dummy application at http://localhost:4200.

For more information on using ember-cli, visit https://ember-cli.com/.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.