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Re: User-Agent strings, privacy and Debian browsers



Sorry for the late reply but currently I am porting a new architecture
and have not very much time...

Am 2007-09-21 18:03:05, schrieb Peter Eckersley:
> Consider for a moment a typical User-Agent string sent by a Debian web browser:
> 
> Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070802 Iceape/1.1.4 (Debian-1.1.4-1)
> 
> Unfortunately, the fact that this information identifies a specific
> package and version of that package means that Debian users (already a
> select group) have their browsing identities further distinguished by
> their User-Agent strings.

Which quiet helpful IF YOU NEED complex websites which MUST work
with ANY browsers

> This means, in practice, that many sites will be able to track Debian
> users by their User-Agent, even if (say) the user is blocking cookies or
> limiting them to a single session and is changing IP address regularly.

Tracking $USER is not possibel if you check the popularity-contest.
Mean:  there 100th of thousands Debian-User using the same Program.

> What do people think of picking a single User-Agent string for all
> versions of all of Debian's Gecko-based browsers?

Which leed to errors while trying to resolv bugs.

> Would there be any serious harm in terms of browser debugging?  Are
> there many sites which usefully treat different Gecko browsers
> differently?

Yes, at least my Website an some Intranet-Sites of the french military...

> As a far more hypothetical question, what would people think of picking
> a single User-Agent for Gecko-based browsers for a larger set of
> GNU/Linux distributions?  Obviously, there is much more politics there,
> because any distributions that joined would be losing the ability to
> measure their desktop market share by looking at web statistics.

Thanks, Greetings and nice Day
    Michelle Konzack
    Systemadministrator
    Tamay Dogan Network
    Debian GNU/Linux Consultant


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