Confirm
729
edits
Changes
→User Agent
Detected from HTTP header. Pretty simple fix, but has the potential for breakage (as with any UA change!). For instance: <code>Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100106
Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.7</code>. Remedies: remove the last point digit in the Firefox and Gecko versions, and the Gecko build date; for Linux, remove distribution and version; possibly remove CPU. Windows is actually the least unique since the OS version string only identifies the major version (e.g. XP), and by far the majority of users are on it.
Remove language and "Firefox" as well?
Boris Zbarsky points out that most parts of the UA lead to bad sniffing. Irish "ga-IE" and "Minef'''ie'''ld" get detected as IE. Sites incorrectly sniff based on OS. Sites sniff for Gecko years rather than Gecko versions. Going from 3.0.9 to 3.0.10 probably breaks things. And quite a few sites sniff for "Firefox", which is a threat to the continued freedom of the web. So removing things from the UA string has a long-term positive effect on compatibility as well as privacy.
== HTTP ACCEPT ==
