Re: User-Agent strings, privacy and Debian browsers
On 11150 March 1977, Peter Eckersley wrote:
>> This is highly debateable. There may be tens or thousands of users of
>> the same package visiting a web site.
> I've seen reports from very large sites indicating that User-Agent
> strings are almost as useful as cookies for tracking their users.
I cant believe this. Looking at the stats from packages.debian.org - U-A
is the worst possible way to "track users". Would be totally dumb to try
something with U-A:
Lets take the access log from packages.debian.org which starts at
20/Sep/2007:06:55:10 +0000 which has 2576180 lines in it right now.
Looking for "MSIE 6.0" we have 97961 hits,
with more detail, first 15 rows we get
13756 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
12985 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
6252 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)
6048 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
4627 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
4505 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
3371 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
2321 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)
1724 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)
1335 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
1309 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
1256 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
1235 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1)
1196 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
909 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1)
which is most of them.
Same for anything matching "Firefox/", has 467789 total hits,
with more detail, first 15 rows we get
89003 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty)
51159 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
21879 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
11289 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.3 (Ubuntu-feisty)
10975 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fr; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
10217 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
8542 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty)
7572 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
6029 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; es-ES; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
5379 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; it; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
4885 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
4859 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
4606 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
4549 Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070919 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.6
4472 Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
And thats a quick and very inaccurate way to do it. But it nicely shows
that modifying your UA (or forcing others to do so) does not gain you or
anyone else anything. The only effect you have is to make statistics
more unusable than they already are. Thats not worth to invest the work
this suggestion would need, even if it would only be a simple change. :)
--
bye Joerg
>Starting network management services:
> Warning: -s option is deprecated, use -Lsd instead
Uah. snmpd on drugs.
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