javascript - Can Content Security Policy be made compatible with Google Analytics and AdSense?

Question

Does anyone know how to get CSP, even with the default-src wildcard, to work so a modern Analytics script sends website per-page data (not just home page data) to the site owner's account and so AdSense ads appear?

I tried many variations of CSP for my website, including that proposed in <H5BP.com>'s .htaccess file, but all blocked Google Analytics from producing per-page data (except for the home page) and Google AdSense from accepting ads on any page.

Google's machines did not see the Analytics script although Google's humans always saw it in my website source code. Even setting CSP default-src to the asterisk wildcard failed.

Asking at a Google forum and a non-Google forum got nothing that worked except that people said the problem was with my CSP and I received one email that said that I should comment CSP out completely. That last worked. Commenting out should be no better than default-src wildcard but commenting out is the only way I got ads and inside-the-website data.

• I posted to Google about a month ago about the incompatibility but no answer refuted that (https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Code-Implementation/content-security-policy-and-Analytics-and-likely-AdSense/m-p/491031).

• The Stack Overflow answers at <Google Analytics and Content-Security-Policy header > do not indicate that anyone is getting within-website Analytics data and that thread is based on an outdated Google script.

• The thread at <Google analytics.js and Content Security Policy > is for an app, not a website, no one there reported getting within-website Analytics data, and my efforts failed even with the maximally permissive CSP.

• A solution is in the thread <Google analytics Universal code not tracking > but the solution is limited to setting CSP to reporting, not blocking, which is not of much use to me.

No Stack Overflow thread is about CSP and AdSense. When I proposed that H5BP tell users about this in their model <.htaccess>, their respondent said it works for him and referred me to you.

As a check on advice, is anyone seeing that page-specific data in their own Google Analytics account and seeing AdSense ads while running .htaccess CSP?

Answer 1

Adsense

For Google adsense, e.g. this CSP "works":

Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self';

It prevents your page being framed without putting limits on what your page can do. Hence its XSS protection is nonexistent.

But the Adsense scripts can be loading something that loads, which in turn loads etc. And given the thousands (at the time of writing: 3103 ) 3rd party advertising networks they can use, there simply is no reasonable nor practicable way for us to ever know what all of them could be needing for the ads to function. So to restrict where you're going to let images, flash, javascript etc. be loaded from if you want to have Adsense just is not going to happen.

One or the other:

• either Adsense
• either a restrictive CSP

But not both.

Analytics

is another matter, already covered in other replies. [not a user]

CSP policies

Potential authors of permissive CSP policies need to be reminded that e.g. https: and * do not include permission for unsafe-inline nor data: sources. I've seen quite a few places around the web where authors assume they do.

While writing policies it might be better to put a report-only one up first. The header is named "Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only" instead of "Content-Security-Policy" and it'll not stop anything, just do the reporting part in json to the specified destination. See here: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/security/csp/#report-only