Websites (e.g. TfL) not working in Firefox

Have you been trying use websites, like Transport for London (TfL) journey planner, in Firefox recently (or for a while) and found that they seem broken - e.g. TfL only shows the bus route?! Well you're not the only one. Since Firefox version 42 Mozilla has enabled Tracking Protection which is generally a very good thing (as there's way too many trackers out there keeping tabs on where/when/what you're up to). Sadly some sites aren't designed to cope with that so they fail to work properly - like TfL and others.

Fortunately it's easy to fix once you know how: When Firefox blocks tracking elements it helpfully puts an additional 'shield' icon in the URL bar to indicate the fact. If you click on the shield icon it shows a button to 'Disable protection for this site' - which disables tracker blocking for that site - you'll then see a line drawn through the shield to indicate this.

One other thing is that if you also use other blocker plugins/extensions in Firefox (e.g. uBlock, Ghostery, AdBlockPlus) you may also need exempt the site in those too.

Ghostery app's new WiFi Protection feature

I'm a fan of the Ghostery apps and plugins - they allow one to keep an eye on just how many other people are trying to snoop over my shoulder when I'm on the web.

The latest version of the iOS Ghostery app (v1.4) mentions a new feature called 'Wifi Protection via proxy automatic file (aka PAC file)', but with little explanation as to what it is... I took a look at this new version at it seems they've come up with a way to add tracker blocking for ALL apps when connected to WiFi. They have done this by creating a custom PAC file which you need to copy and paste into your WiFi setup which then provides for filtering (in Javascript) of trackers for all connections when on that WiFi network (you will need to copy and paste the PAC file for each WiFi network you connect to for it work on all WiFI networks you connect to). To enable it you click on the WiFi button in Ghostery and follow their instructions.

If you're paranoid you can download their Javascript PAC file and host it on your own server (and modify the PROXY entries so it uses your own server to return 'HTTP/1.1 204 No Content').
This looks like a pretty nice feature, though they caution that one should use Chrome or Ghostery as Mobile Safari may be a bit slow.

One thing that comes to mind is that us of PAC files could provide for a nasty security hole as you can basically fill them with an arbitrary JavaScript function that could do all sorts of fun stuff like redirect your more sensitive web visits elsewhere. This is not to say Ghostery is doing this but it just brought to mind the possibilities - so beware of random PAC files.

iOS7 uses IPv6 privacy address extensions

I got a curious warning from Google about a 'Suspicious sign in prevented' which turned out to be a connection over IPv6 from my iPhone to Gmail. I'm aware that I've been using IPv6 for a while now - it's been in iOS since iOS4 I think - so either Google has recently started warning people about changing IPv6 logins, or iOS7 has updated their implementation to include IPv6 privacy extensions (Specified in RFC4941). Either way it seems iOS7 is definitely using IPv6 privacy addressing (and possibly older versions of iOS also) which means that the IPv6 address of your iPhone/iPad will change over time and will not reflect the underlying Ethernet hardware MAC address (as it does for the basic stateless autoconfiguration).

It seems that privacy addressing is becoming the default as a number of OSes have adopted them (Linux, OSX, Windows) a while ago. Overall I think it's a good thing as I'm not sure I want my device to potentially be tracked by its hardware address (which is largely contained in a normal autoconfigured IPv6 address).