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Comment by lukev

3 years ago

This doesn't make sense. The browser provides the user agent as a header in HTTP requests. They can't detect if or how the server is using that information.

Or do you mean your friend's product is a browser plugin? In which case, um, yes, I don't want it having access to any more information than it it needs to do it's job (and honestly, probably not even that.)

71 comments

lukev

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re-thc  3 years ago

> The browser provides the user agent as a header in HTTP requests.

They (Chrome) are taking it away [0].

[0]: https://developer.chrome.com/en/docs/privacy-sandbox/user-ag...

  • matheusmoreira  3 years ago

    Excellent. Sites shouldn't know what user agent we're using anyway. Pretty much the only thing they use this for is to lock us out when we use "unsupported" browsers. The less information they get, the better. Hopefully they'll get rid of referrer too and weaken fingerprinting methods.

    I have no doubt Google has self-serving motivations here but the result is still a win for us. I wish Firefox had enough leverage to force decisions like this down people's throats whether they like it or not but it just ain't so. Reality is imperfect so I'll take what I can get.

    • technion  3 years ago

      I've always advocated for feature detection. If you test for typeof Object.assign !== 'function' you can be sure you have a reasonably recent browser. If you want fetch, test for window.fetch.

      This sort of thing always feels like it's going against the grain, with someone always asking "why wouldn't you do this properly. You know, build an allow list of user agents and match against them". I fully support people being forced into detecting the features they want and doing away with this nonsense,

      14 replies →

  • infogulch  3 years ago

    I'm all on board calling Google out for slowly implementing a user data protection racket, where Google owns all the data and everyone else is squeezed out and has to go through Google as The central data broker. At the same time this user agent reduction thing seems like a decent idea at first blush and good for users privacy.