Comment by jagged-chisel

3 days ago

I wouldn’t think the intention is to s/Mozilla// but to select another well-known UA string.

The string I use in my extension is "anubis is crap". I took it from a different FF extension that had been posted in a /g/ thread about Anubis, which is where I got the idea from in the first place. I don't use other people's extensions if I can help it (because of the obvious risk), but I figured I'd use the same string in my own extension so as to be combined with users of that extension for the sake of user-agent statistics.

  • It's a bit telling that you "don't use extensions if you can help it" but trust advice from a 4chan board

    • It's also a bit telling that you read the phrase "I took it from a different FF extension that had been posted" and interpreted it as taking advice instead of reading source code.

    • It's telling that he understands the difference between taking something he can't fully verify and taking simple hints that improve his understanding?

The UA will be compared to other data points such as screen resolution, fonts, plugins, etc. which means that you are definitely more identifiable if you change just the UA vs changing your entire browser or operating system.

I don't think there are any.

Because servers would serve different content based on user agent virtually all browsers start with Mozilla/5.0...

  • curl, wget, lynx, and elinks all don't by default (I checked). Mainstream web browsers likely all do, and will forever.

    • Anubis will let curl through, while blocking any non-mainstream browser which will likely say "Mozilla" in its UA just for best compatibility and call that a "bot"? WTF.