• Categories
  • Recent
  • Tags
  • Popular
  • Users
  • Groups
  • Search
  • Register
  • Login
UBports Robot Logo UBports Forum
  • Categories
  • Recent
  • Tags
  • Popular
  • Users
  • Groups
  • Search
  • Register
  • Login

User Agent Stuff

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved App Development
19 Posts 4 Posters 1.5k Views 1 Watching
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • D Offline
      dtarrant
      last edited by 19 Oct 2018, 08:50

      Once or twice when I've had problems getting one of my webapps to stream video from the target website it's been suggested that I should change the user agent string (@advocatux). In my efforts to learn more about user agents, I stumbled across www.whatismybrowser.com which parses your user agent string and hosts several interesting guides. Most of it is above my head but as I hadn't come across this site before, I decided to post the post the information in case it may be of interest to fellow ubuntu touchers.

      A 1 Reply Last reply 19 Oct 2018, 12:24 Reply Quote 1
      • A Offline
        advocatux @dtarrant
        last edited by 19 Oct 2018, 12:24

        @dtarrant on a related note, Morph's user agent has been changed from Chromium to Chrome (https://github.com/ubports/morph-browser/pull/40)

        On a less related note [*], https://panopticlick.eff.org/ is a good place to learn about browser fingerprints.

        [*] I just want to plug that EFF site so people can learn more about what kind of info any browser is exposing 🙂

        D 1 Reply Last reply 19 Oct 2018, 14:10 Reply Quote 1
        • D Offline
          dtarrant @advocatux
          last edited by dtarrant 19 Oct 2018, 14:10

          @advocatux Interesting. Whatismybrowser reports my Nexus 4 OTA 5 browser as Chromium 65. Panopticlick doesn't report my browser identity.
          Whatismybrowser also reports my user agent string.

          A 1 Reply Last reply 19 Oct 2018, 15:26 Reply Quote 0
          • A Offline
            advocatux @dtarrant
            last edited by 19 Oct 2018, 15:26

            @dtarrant when using a mobile device in that page, to see the complete results, you need to tap on that orange sentence that says "show full results for fingerprinting"

            D 1 Reply Last reply 19 Oct 2018, 16:17 Reply Quote 0
            • D Offline
              dtarrant @advocatux
              last edited by 19 Oct 2018, 16:17

              @advocatux Got it. Panopticlick also says Chromium 65. Surprisingly, it also says the browser fingerprint is unique amongst the 2.3 million tested in the last 45 days!

              A 1 Reply Last reply 19 Oct 2018, 21:12 Reply Quote 0
              • A Offline
                advocatux @dtarrant
                last edited by 19 Oct 2018, 21:12

                @dtarrant do you have uAdBlock installed too?

                The user agent has been changed to Chrome in devel, I imagine rc will get it in the next update.

                D 1 Reply Last reply 19 Oct 2018, 22:24 Reply Quote 0
                • D Offline
                  dtarrant @advocatux
                  last edited by 19 Oct 2018, 22:24

                  @advocatux No, I've never tried uAdBlock. Although adverts can be tiresome, I do understand that many internet resources would not be sustainable without advertising revenue. It's just another business model.
                  Regarding the switch to the Chrome user agent, what benefits are likely to arise?
                  I notice that vivid on my tablet uses Chromium 55 and that works pretty well.

                  A 1 Reply Last reply 20 Oct 2018, 06:51 Reply Quote 0
                  • A Offline
                    advocatux @dtarrant
                    last edited by 20 Oct 2018, 06:51

                    Although adverts can be tiresome, I do understand that many internet resources would not be sustainable without advertising revenue

                    I don't mind ads but I don't like direct marketing, tracking, and malvertising [*] 🙂

                    Regarding the switch to the Chrome user agent, what benefits are likely to arise?

                    It's to solve a problem with ReCaptcha, mainly.

                    [*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising

                    D 2 Replies Last reply 20 Oct 2018, 08:30 Reply Quote 1
                    • D Offline
                      dtarrant @advocatux
                      last edited by 20 Oct 2018, 08:30

                      @advocatux 👍

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • D Offline
                        dtarrant @advocatux
                        last edited by dtarrant 20 Oct 2018, 08:51

                        @advocatux That's a real eye-opener isn't it? How vulnerable to this class of attack is UT?

                        A 1 Reply Last reply 20 Oct 2018, 08:59 Reply Quote 0
                        • A Offline
                          advocatux @dtarrant
                          last edited by 20 Oct 2018, 08:59

                          @dtarrant I don't know but the confined nature of UT is good to mitigate it in the worse scenario

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • A Offline
                            advocatux
                            last edited by 20 Oct 2018, 09:50

                            @dtarrant another good thing about using uAdBlock is that you save a lot of data and that's a must for people using limited data plans in their devices.

                            See for example this study Troy Hunt did the last month (using pi-hole) https://www.troyhunt.com/mmm-pi-hole/

                            Whoa! That's an 80% reduction in network requests and an 82% reduction in the number of bytes transferred.

                            D M 2 Replies Last reply 20 Oct 2018, 13:57 Reply Quote 1
                            • D Offline
                              dtarrant @advocatux
                              last edited by 20 Oct 2018, 13:57

                              @advocatux Cool! 🐧

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • M Offline
                                Marathon2422 @advocatux
                                last edited by 20 Oct 2018, 15:10

                                @advocatux
                                enjoyed reading that; very educational

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • L Offline
                                  Lakotaubp
                                  last edited by 21 Oct 2018, 07:32

                                  Might be a silly question but is there away to autostart uAdblock on start similar to Ufw.

                                  A 1 Reply Last reply 21 Oct 2018, 09:16 Reply Quote 0
                                  • A Offline
                                    advocatux @Lakotaubp
                                    last edited by advocatux 21 Oct 2018, 09:16

                                    @lakotaubp you can set 'on' or 'off' uAdBlock using its GUI. When it's 'on' it's always "running" system-wide because what uAdBlock does is customize the hosts file.

                                    If you have set it 'on' it survives system reboots. Maybe that's the autostart you are asking for?

                                    Taking a look to any of these files https://github.com/mariogrip/uAdBlock/tree/master/host-files helps to get the full picture about what this app does.

                                    L 1 Reply Last reply 21 Oct 2018, 10:32 Reply Quote 0
                                    • L Offline
                                      Lakotaubp @advocatux
                                      last edited by 21 Oct 2018, 10:32

                                      @advocatux Ok its only when I remember to re check its Gui is marked as off. So I put that down to restarting after daily dev updates. With my ageing brain I keep forgetting about it. : )

                                      A 1 Reply Last reply 21 Oct 2018, 10:39 Reply Quote 0
                                      • A Offline
                                        advocatux @Lakotaubp
                                        last edited by 21 Oct 2018, 10:39

                                        @lakotaubp some time ago I needed to re-enable uAdBlock after every reboot but now it's already enabled after every daily update (YMMV).

                                        L 1 Reply Last reply 21 Oct 2018, 19:36 Reply Quote 0
                                        • L Offline
                                          Lakotaubp @advocatux
                                          last edited by 21 Oct 2018, 19:36

                                          @advocatux Yes as usual you are correct : ) it seems

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          5 out of 19
                                          • First post
                                            5/19
                                            Last post