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    User Agent Stuff

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    • D
      dtarrant last edited by

      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.

      advocatux 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • advocatux
        advocatux @dtarrant last edited by

        @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 🙂

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          dtarrant @advocatux last edited by dtarrant

          @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.

          advocatux 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • advocatux
            advocatux @dtarrant last edited by

            @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"

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              dtarrant @advocatux last edited by

              @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!

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              • advocatux
                advocatux @dtarrant last edited by

                @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.

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                  dtarrant @advocatux last edited by

                  @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.

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                  • advocatux
                    advocatux @dtarrant last edited by

                    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

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                      dtarrant @advocatux last edited by

                      @advocatux 👍

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                        dtarrant @advocatux last edited by dtarrant

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

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                        • advocatux
                          advocatux @dtarrant last edited by

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

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                          • advocatux
                            advocatux last edited by

                            @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.

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                              dtarrant @advocatux last edited by

                              @advocatux Cool! 🐧

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                                Marathon2422 @advocatux last edited by

                                @advocatux
                                enjoyed reading that; very educational

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                                • Lakotaubp
                                  Lakotaubp last edited by

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

                                  advocatux 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • advocatux
                                    advocatux @Lakotaubp last edited by advocatux

                                    @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.

                                    Lakotaubp 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • Lakotaubp
                                      Lakotaubp @advocatux last edited by

                                      @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. : )

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                                      • advocatux
                                        advocatux @Lakotaubp last edited by

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

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                                        • Lakotaubp
                                          Lakotaubp @advocatux last edited by

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

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