Friday, November 8, 2013

Vodafone Content Tampering Making Sites Very Slow On Wi-Fi

I've had issues with this blog sometimes being very slow on my iPhone when using Wi-Fi. I finally figured out what is going and it seems like Vodafone (Netherlands) are to blame.

I noticed my browser is trying to download which never succeeds on Wi-Fi. A whois search seems to indicate the entire address block is invalid and shouldn't be used on the public internet. All traffic to this address block is dropped along the route and it takes the browser (or TCP/IP stack) a full minute to give up and continu loading my blog. Strangely enough downloading this script on a Vodafone NL 3G connection does succeed.

But why is my client requesting this bizarre URL? It is actually part of which is used on my blog pages. When requesting this page over a Vodafone NL 3G mobile connection the content of this blank page is:
<html><script src="" language="javascript"></script>
<body style="background-color: transparent"></body></html>

There it is; this blank.html page contains a script tag to load the mysterious resource from When requesting this same blank.html from my Wi-Fi connection I get a trully blank page:
<html><body style="background-color: transparent"></body></html>

You don't really notice the difference while your are on Vodafone NL 3G network. Your browser will download the file from and the site seems to function okay. But what happens when your device (re)connects to Wi-Fi? Google sends response headers with blank.html telling your browser it is okay to cache the page for 24 hours. So your device will simply use the cached (tampered) version of blank.html it retrieved through Vodafone's network. But now you are on Wi-Fi and your device can't load the file from and the site is dead slow.

Okay, this is bad, but let's hope the problem clears after 24 hours. After all your browser is only allowed to cache the tampered blank.html page for 24 hours. Unfortunately the problem doesn't disappear after 24 hours. This is caused by Google sending an ETag response header with blank.html as well. An ETag is an opaque identifier assigned by a web server to a specific version of a resource found at a URL. If the resource content at that URL ever changes, a new and different ETag should be assigned. Google sending an ETag is a good thing, but Vodafone is altering the content so they should also change the ETag. Unfortunately they don't so your browser is caching this altered version under Google's original ETag. So even when the cache expires after 24 hours and your browser is asking for a fresh copy of blank.html it will include the ETag with this request. Whether you are on Wi-Fi or 3G, Google will always respond that blank.html hasn't changed since your request includes their original ETag. This instructs your browser to keep using the (tampered) cached version. In the end, you are stuck with the altered version of blank.html until you clear your browser cache.

Vodafone is altering pages I request from the internet and to make things worse they are altering them in such a way that these pages won't work outside of their network while allowing my browser to cache this crippled content. This really sucks! I want the real internet and not some crippled version! Vodafone support is acknowledging they are injecting javascript through a transparent proxy. They state the only way to get rid of this is to use a different APN setting on your mobile device which first has to be activated for your account through technical support. This sucks big time! Sure I can get my account fixed, but who knows how many more people are running into this issue without ever figuring out what is going on.

Hopefully this rant can help others understand what is going on when they see this failed downloads from the or IP address.


  1. Great explanation, but how can I remove the injection? Which plugin/which script triggers it?

    1. Seems like there isn't much you can do about it. While you are on the Vodafone network things should work okay with the injected scripts. Once you get off the Vodafone network (eg use wifi) you will have to clear your browser cache to get rid of it. Things get tricky if your "browser" is a mobile app that has downloaded and cached something. Most mobile apps (that aren't browsers) don't offer a way to clear their cache.
      Only other solution is to contact Vodafone customer support and complain so you can get on the other APN without this annoying script injection

