[CentOS] Centos in the Browser string ?

Sat Mar 26 00:10:02 UTC 2016
James B. Byrne <byrnejb at harte-lyne.ca>

On Thu, March 24, 2016 11:56, g wrote:
>
>
> On 03/24/16 09:29, Richard wrote:
>>> Date: Thursday, March 24, 2016 14:10:41 +0000
>>> From: Always Learning <centos at u64.u22.net>
>>> On Wed, 2016-03-23 at 22:29 -0700, Alice Wonder wrote:
>>>
>>>> What purpose does it serve? I don't object to it being there
>>>>  but I also don't see a benefit to it being there.
>>>>
>>>> Ubuntu btw is not exactly a distribution I want RHEL/EPEL/CentOS
>>>> developers to emulate...
>>>
>>> Spread the successful Centos 'brand name' :-)
>>
>> The user-agent string is one of the items used in uniquely
>> identifying/fingerprinting a user/machine, so the more generic it is
>> the better. Including the details of the OS add to the "bits of
>> identifying information" available to trackers.
>>
>> See the EFF testing site for more details:
>>
>>    <https://panopticlick.eff.org/>
>>
> --
>
> aware of panopticlick.
>
> if you have a file in profile directory, add this to it. if not,
> create file and paste this in it.
>
>   //set user agent to blank
>   user_pref("general.useragent.override", " ");
>
> what makes you get a unique rating is that you report no agent. only
> info any site will know about you is your ip address.
>
> if you want to hide that, use a proxy server. ((GBWG))
>
>

On the other hand, setting it to 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1;
rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0' would make one look like the
latest TOR browser.  Which, if CentOS set Firefox to that by default,
would make identifying TOR users a great deal harder.

Just a thought.

-- 
***          e-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel          ***
        Do NOT transmit sensitive data via e-Mail
 Do NOT open attachments or follow links sent by e-Mail

James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
Harte & Lyne Limited          http://www.harte-lyne.ca
9 Brockley Drive              vox: +1 905 561 1241
Hamilton, Ontario             fax: +1 905 561 0757
Canada  L8E 3C3