Bug#634101: chromium: Ads on the "new tab" page (non-blockable by adblock)

[Urs Ganse]

Package: chromium
Version: 12.0.742.112~r90304-1
Severity: minor

Chromium includes a "feature" with which google can display ads on the
"new tab" page, and possibly others.

This morning, this mechanism caused an advertisment for a game called
"Angry Birds", which is supposed to be available in the chrome app store
now, to be displayed in my browser.

Since the new tab page is protected from executing third-party addons,
adblock plus can not be used to block these ads.

Within the browser, a sophisticated background downloading system for
ads, based on the web tipps system has been implemented. It periodically
checks for content at the hardcoded address
"https://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/topic/1142433/inproduct?hl=",
and then includes this content in places it deems appropriate.

Even though advertisment being shown in a browser window is nothing new
to anyone, and the display of these ads can be quickly deactivated, I
think that this mechanism is a new quality of invasive advertising,
since the browser itself (being a free software product) is being abused
with an explicit mechanism to transport and display ad content entirely
controlled by google inc.
It is my opinion that this ad mechanism should not be part of the Debian
operating system.

Hence, I have attached a patch to remove this whole advertisment system
from the chromium source, applicable against version
12.0.742.112~r90304-1 currently in wheezy and sid.

Upstream bug report for this issue:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=89499

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.36 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages chromium depends on:
ii  chromium-insp 12.0.742.112~r90304-1      page inspector for the chromium br
ii  libasound2    1.0.23-4                   shared library for ALSA applicatio
ii  libbz2-1.0    1.0.5-6                    high-quality block-sorting file co
ii  libc6         2.13-7                     Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcairo2     1.10.2-6                   The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libcups2      1.4.6-9                    Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libdbus-1-3   1.4.12-2                   simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib- 0.94-4                     simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libevent-1.4- 1.4.13-stable-1            An asynchronous event notification
ii  libexpat1     2.0.1-7                    XML parsing C library - runtime li
ii  libfontconfig 2.8.0-3                    generic font configuration library
ii  libfreetype6  2.4.4-2                    FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libgcc1       1:4.6.1-1                  GCC support library
ii  libgconf2-4   2.32.4-1                   GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libgcrypt11   1.4.6-7                    LGPL Crypto library - runtime libr
ii  libgdk-pixbuf 2.23.5-1                   GDK Pixbuf library
ii  libglib2.0-0  2.28.6-1                   The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgtk2.0-0   2.24.4-3                   The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libjpeg62     6b1-1                      The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG 
ii  libnss3-1d    3.12.10-2                  Network Security Service libraries
ii  libpam0g      1.1.3-2                    Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpango1.0-0 1.28.4-1                   Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libpng12-0    1.2.44-2                   PNG library - runtime
ii  libspeex1     1.2~rc1-1                  The Speex codec runtime library
ii  libstdc++6    4.6.1-1                    GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libvpx0       0.9.6-1                    VP8 video codec (shared library)
ii  libx11-6      2:1.4.3-2                  X11 client-side library
ii  libxdamage1   1:1.1.3-2                  X11 damaged region extension libra
ii  libxext6      2:1.3.0-3                  X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxml2       2.7.8.dfsg-3               GNOME XML library
ii  libxrender1   1:0.9.6-2                  X Rendering Extension client libra
ii  libxslt1.1    1.1.26-7+b1                XSLT 1.0 processing library - runt
ii  libxss1       1:1.2.1-1                  X11 Screen Saver extension library
ii  libxtst6      2:1.2.0-1                  X11 Testing -- Record extension li
ii  xdg-utils     1.1.0~rc1-2                desktop integration utilities from
ii  zlib1g        1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3           compression library - runtime

chromium recommends no packages.

Versions of packages chromium suggests:
pn  chromium-l10n                 <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information
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