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GoDaddy removed a JavaScript injection from his customers’ websites because they were slowing down or even breaking them. That’s what ZDNet reports. The injection was added to track which websites were slowing down.

The injection was discovered by programmer Igor Kromin, who had problems in the admin interface of his own website hosted by GoDaddy. Because of these problems he decided to look at the code to see if there were any problems. He also discovered that a JavaScript file could not load. This implied that an unknown JavaScript file was loaded on his website.

There was little evidence of this file in the source code or in the templates, but all the pages on the website appeared to load JavaScript. The file in question comes from GoDaddy’s Real User Metrics (RUM) system. The company describes that system as a way to “identify internal bottlenecks and optimization opportunities by injecting a small piece of JavaScript code into their customers’ websites”.

“The piece of code allows us to measure and track the performance of your website, and collects information such as the connection time and the time it takes to load a page,” says the hosting company. “Customers in the United States and those who used cPanel Shared Hosting or cPanel Business were automatically signed up for the service.

Impact on website

GoDaddy has admitted that the code can have an impact on website performance. Users should therefore be aware of what can cause delays and broken websites. “Most websites don’t suffer from this, but websites with Google’s AMP and pages that end with multiple tags can become victims.

GoDaddy users could indicate that they did not want to cooperate with the system. To do that they had to go to a myh.godaddy.com, click on the ‘…’ button, ‘Help us’ and ‘Opt Out’. Then the script was automatically removed from the website. But when GoDaddy was informed of the so-called RUM program, the company promised to disable the function immediately.

“We will reintroduce the program in the future, but that is only on an opt-in basis. We apologize for any confusion and problems with our customers.”

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.