Comment by kube-system

9 hours ago

Spoofed UAs are easily detected. And if you are spoofing your UA you are among a very small subset of users.

6 comments

kube-system

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godelski  6 hours ago

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

  • kube-system  6 hours ago

    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.

    • godelski  6 hours ago

      My example of access is just a clearer example of laziness. Maybe they were tracking but it seems unlikely, right? If they were, why not block? Laziness is a much better explanation.

      I can get feedback with access, I can't get feedback with tracking. That's why I mentioned access.

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