Ask HN: PG&E site does not function with ad-blockers

by harikbon 3/23/2024, 2:29 PMwith 2 comments

NOTE: PG&E is California electric&gas utility company site (pge.com). Issue only occurs when a real customer tries to login.

I am trying to debug why I can't login to PG&E site when I use pi-hole/dns ad-blocking. pi-hole seems to block the following URLs from PG&E login page [1] [2] [3].

Net effect is that I can see a greyed out logged-in page, can see my amount due in a faint color, but can't click on any subsequent links because some "grey out everything until page is fully loaded" event hasn't happened.

So sad

[1] https://cdn.appdynamics.com/adrum/adrum-4.5.9.2098.js

[2] https://cdn.optimizely.com/js/1115471569.js

[3] https://s.go-mpulse.net/boomerang/....

by PopAlongKidon 3/23/2024, 3:06 PM

I am using NoScript on Firefox, nothing else. When I tried to log in, first it made me go through a stupid password reset, that involved sending a plaintext temporary password to my email account, answer a security question, then force me to change my password, which I changed back to the original one. What a joke.

Anyway, in NoScript I had to "temp trust" pge.com, while leaving all those other links (the ones you listed and a few more) as "untrusted". So right now I am logged in, but there is a pop up asking (forcing) me to "update my contact info" in case of a Public Safety Power outage. There is a little 3-dot progress icon I can see in the middle of the pop up, like it's trying to refresh something. I can't escape the pop up unless I click on "Update contact info" (even though I have no updates).

So I did that, not actually updating anything, and now I see what you describe, a grey-ed out page with my info, but the little 3 dot progress spinner just running continuously, and my mouse cursor also spinning continuously when hovering over the page.