<![CDATA[User Agent Stuff]]>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.

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1840/user-agent-stuffRSS for NodeMon, 11 May 2026 20:28:30 GMTFri, 19 Oct 2018 08:50:46 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sun, 21 Oct 2018 19:36:50 GMT]]>@advocatux Yes as usual you are correct : ) it seems

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13808https://forums.ubports.com/post/13808Sun, 21 Oct 2018 19:36:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sun, 21 Oct 2018 10:39:39 GMT]]>@lakotaubp some time ago I needed to re-enable uAdBlock after every reboot but now it's already enabled after every daily update (YMMV).

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13791https://forums.ubports.com/post/13791Sun, 21 Oct 2018 10:39:39 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sun, 21 Oct 2018 10:32:04 GMT]]>@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. : )

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13790https://forums.ubports.com/post/13790Sun, 21 Oct 2018 10:32:04 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sun, 21 Oct 2018 09:20:27 GMT]]>@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.

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13787https://forums.ubports.com/post/13787Sun, 21 Oct 2018 09:20:27 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sun, 21 Oct 2018 07:32:59 GMT]]>Might be a silly question but is there away to autostart uAdblock on start similar to Ufw.

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13785https://forums.ubports.com/post/13785Sun, 21 Oct 2018 07:32:59 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sat, 20 Oct 2018 15:10:54 GMT]]>@advocatux
enjoyed reading that; very educational

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13771https://forums.ubports.com/post/13771Sat, 20 Oct 2018 15:10:54 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sat, 20 Oct 2018 13:57:16 GMT]]>@advocatux Cool! 🐧

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13769https://forums.ubports.com/post/13769Sat, 20 Oct 2018 13:57:16 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sat, 20 Oct 2018 09:50:39 GMT]]>@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.

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13760https://forums.ubports.com/post/13760Sat, 20 Oct 2018 09:50:39 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sat, 20 Oct 2018 08:59:58 GMT]]>@dtarrant I don't know but the confined nature of UT is good to mitigate it in the worse scenario

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13757https://forums.ubports.com/post/13757Sat, 20 Oct 2018 08:59:58 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sat, 20 Oct 2018 08:52:23 GMT]]>@advocatux That's a real eye-opener isn't it? How vulnerable to this class of attack is UT?

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13756https://forums.ubports.com/post/13756Sat, 20 Oct 2018 08:52:23 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sat, 20 Oct 2018 08:30:34 GMT]]>@advocatux 👍

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13755https://forums.ubports.com/post/13755Sat, 20 Oct 2018 08:30:34 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Sat, 20 Oct 2018 06:51:00 GMT]]>

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

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13750https://forums.ubports.com/post/13750Sat, 20 Oct 2018 06:51:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Fri, 19 Oct 2018 22:24:03 GMT]]>@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.

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13744https://forums.ubports.com/post/13744Fri, 19 Oct 2018 22:24:03 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Fri, 19 Oct 2018 21:12:11 GMT]]>@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.

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13740https://forums.ubports.com/post/13740Fri, 19 Oct 2018 21:12:11 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Fri, 19 Oct 2018 16:17:10 GMT]]>@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!

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13730https://forums.ubports.com/post/13730Fri, 19 Oct 2018 16:17:10 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Fri, 19 Oct 2018 15:26:10 GMT]]>@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"

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13725https://forums.ubports.com/post/13725Fri, 19 Oct 2018 15:26:10 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Fri, 19 Oct 2018 14:12:19 GMT]]>@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.

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13724https://forums.ubports.com/post/13724Fri, 19 Oct 2018 14:12:19 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to User Agent Stuff on Fri, 19 Oct 2018 12:24:44 GMT]]>@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 🙂

]]>https://forums.ubports.com/post/13709https://forums.ubports.com/post/13709Fri, 19 Oct 2018 12:24:44 GMT