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Re: Faked Browser with Mozilla Firebird



on Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 12:57:46AM -0800, Martin J. Hillyer (mlhillyer@comcast.net) wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 05:16:33AM +0000, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> > on Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 10:21:45PM +0000, Clive Menzies (clive@clivemenzies.co.uk) wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm intrigued..... why would you want to do this?  I understand Opera
> > > does it because MS had found a way to lock them out of certain sites.
> > > Is this also a problem for Mozilla?
> > 
> >     http://twiki.iwethey.org/Main/UserAgentString
> > 
> >     The user-agent string has been the source of many of the Web's worst
> >     ills. It's strongly encouraged that it be done away with in a way
> >     that encourages better practices from site authors. 
> > 
> >     ....
> [...]
> 
> I've found an example of a problem apparently caused by the
> UserAgentString check.  I recently switched to Mozilla-firebird, and
> found that after the switch, amazon.com wouldn't recognise my password
> (kept on the local machine by mozilla).  When I changed the
> UserAgentString to plain Mozilla using the User Agent Switcher,
> everything worked.  I've written to amazon suggesting they change
> their ways; we'll see what happens.

Never said the change won't cause problems.  However the problems are
indicative of the greater problem:  reliance on user-agent to
differnetiate service.  Which I'm pointedly attempting to draw sites'
attention to.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
   Moderator, Free Software Law Discussion mailing list:
     http://lists.alt.org/mailman/listinfo/fsl-discuss/

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