Are IHC and other websites running slow on Firefox? Blame b.scorecardresearch.com

Since I use mostly Chrome (insert smug look here), I haven’t noticed this problem, but Delsyd just told me that both IHC and Fark kept hanging up on him and the problem was an unresponsive script from b.scorecardresearch.com. The problem seems to be limited to Firefox only right now, but the script, which is in a number of ads, from Technorati and pre-built into a number of content management systems like Wordpress (and possibly Tumblr) can be disabled for buttery smooth surfing.

A search revealed that b.scorecardresearch.com was a webtracking company, carefully monitoring my keystrokes and website visits. I discovered upon visiting its website that I might opt out of participating in this gangster company’s information gathering. After clicking the “opt out” link, I was told the cookie would be inoperative. In this, they were correct – except the problem wasn’t with a cookie. The problem was that a script had been placed inside the blog infrastructure itself without my knowledge or permission. When I discovered that there were still problems with the site after opting out, I went to the Mozilla support forum and screamed for help. The good geeks at Mozilla came through in spectacular fashion. First, Gerv identified the problem:

The sites which are having the problem include code from Technorati, which itself includes code from extreme-dm.com, which includes a reference to a script on the site b.scorecardresearch.com. For some reason, that script is not loading correctly, and it is not marked as inessential to the page, and so the page load is blocked. This is an example of why including scripts from a 3rd party site in your website is a dangerous thing to do. Do you trust everyone that the owner of that script trusts? So this is (probably) not a problem with Firefox.

So you have a few options: Switch to Chrome or Safari, or just wait it out til the next FF release or visit Scorecardresearch.com and opt out of cookies, which might help (under preferences) or get the NoScript plug-in for Firefox.

More here and here