Interesting - forcing a user agent string could be in violation of GDPR since it would definitely make the user environments more identifiable. The "fingerprinting" discussion refers. On the other hand, if all browsers henceforth were to send the same string the opposite would be true.
I wonder about the reason given: "To avoid compatibility issues." That was - if I recall correctly - the reason for having the string to start with: So that servers can format pages to suit the capabilities of the browser and version used. If in the future all browsers were using the Chromium engine this mechanism might no longer be needed and web pages would no longer need to adjust for browser differences - although I can't see a world where all browsers on all types of devices and all "other" client software would be behaving identically. Gerd ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Ruehsen" <[email protected]> To: "Tim Ruehsen" <[email protected]>, "Bruno Haible" <[email protected]>, [email protected], "bug-wget" <[email protected]>, [email protected] Sent: Monday, February 24, 2020 12:10:56 PM Subject: [bug #57884] wget reveals my operating system to the server Follow-up Comment #6, bug #57884 (project wget): There seem to be concerns and actions taken by browser vendors about regarding the User-Agent header. It's about "freezing" the User-Agent string once and for all to avoid compatibility issues. Is this an option for us ? https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-dev/-2JIRNMWJ7s/yHe4tQNLCgAJ https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/new-privacy-oriented-feature-added-to-edge-82-freeze-user-agent/m-p/1165269 _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?57884> _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.gnu.org/
