iOS 9’s Ad Blockers Could Breaking Some Websites

Don’t like seeing ads on your mobile device while you browse the web? Thanks to iOS 9, ad blocking apps such as Crystal have since been introduced, ultimately allow users to block ads while they surf using the Safari browser. Now if you have installed similar ad blockers and you’re finding some websites not loading properly, those ad blockers might be to blame.

In a report from Fortune, it has been discovered that iOS devices with Crystal installed have cause some online retailer websites to not load properly. To be more specific, this includes websites such as Walmart, Sears and Lululemon, and it is an issue that could severely affect the holiday shopping season according to Chris Mason, CEO of Branding Brand, a company whose platform powers mobile commerce websites and apps.

In some cases, Crystal has blocked certain product images from loading, or in worse cases like when Fortune tested the app on Sears’ website, the website itself did not load at all. According to Crystal’s developer Dean Murphy, he stated that he will remove select e-commerce websites from the app’s blacklist in order for them to load properly.

This is probably just a short-term solution as the long-term would involve recoding. According to Mason, “Retailers can work around it on the consumer side by doing a lot of recoding, but a lot of them freeze their codes on November 1, ahead of the holiday shopping season. So that gives them just over a month or so to get it done.” So if you plan on shopping online but you can’t load certain websites, perhaps you should disable your mobile ad blocker for now.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones, Shopping, Web
Tags: Apps, ios 9