Comment by NoboruWataya
8 hours ago
I often think about this in connection with my user agent. I am sure it helps identify me. If I spoofed a Chrome/Windows UA that would probably be better from a privacy perspective. But if we all do that then web designers will never know that we exist. I want people to know there are Firefox and Linux users out there.
Spoofed UAs are easily detected. And if you are spoofing your UA you are among a very small subset of users.
Easy to detect but companies are lazy. I remember when Netflix first worked for Linux on chrome but not Firefox. I changed my agent and was good to go. After some months I emailed them asking to lift the agent block. They assured me they weren't blocking by agent. I sent them screenshots. They doubled down. So I said ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and just kept using the agent until they unblocked it
Absolutely, but the parent was speaking about privacy. Access is a different story, because you can test different user agent strings, and immediately determine whether you get access. By contrast, you can't change a user agent string and readily determine whether or not you've broken someone's ability to track you.
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