Thanks for posting that info. I downloaded and installed the FireFox plugin and set my user agent to the Netscape 3.x on FreeBSD, even though I'm using FireFox 3.5 on Windows XP Pro. J
John-AldrichTile-Tools From: Angus Scott-Fleming [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 2:51 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: OT Kinda: Interesting Message on Web Page On 9 Dec 2009 at 13:07, Sherry Abercrombie wrote: > Thanks Andy and Angus, I 'know' how it's happening, but you're both > missing my point. Why the heck does Microsoft need to know what OS I'm > on when I'm browsing their site & telling me I may be on the wrong > page? I'm a network admin, I try to keep browsing from an actual server > to a minimum, if I'm researching an issue then I'm going to be doing it > from my workstation. Well, there are really some legitimate reasons for this. The web server serving up the pages may have code optimization so that it serves up relevant pages to your browser. For example, if you go to whitepages.com with your UserAgent set to the Palm Pre example I gave you, whitepages.com redirects you to http://m.whitepages.com/, which is optimized for a mobile screen. If you go to mozilla.com with your UserAgent set to a Mac browser, your download link is the relevant Mac version. If you go to a site with a text-only browser like Lynx, it would be a Good Thing to have the site serve you only text and no images. OTOH changing your UserAgent to show a different OS than what you actually have might make you *_slightly_* more secure as you browse, since some malware might try to attack known vulnerabilities for the wrong OS. YMMV. If you want to browse without disclosing your OS and version, set your UserAgent to "Lynx/2.8.5rel.1 libwww-FM/2.14 SSL-MM/1.4.1 GNUTLS/1.4.4" or "Mozilla/3.0 (WorldGate Gazelle 3.5.1 build 11; FreeBSD2.2.8-STABLE)" (which is for Netscape 3.x running on FreeBSD) and see how it works [grin] Switching User Agents http://whatsmyuseragent.com/SwitchingUserAgents.asp#IE List of User-Agents (Spiders, Robots, Browser) http://www.user-agents.org/ I got a kick out of the very last UserAgent string here: "User Agent Sniffer Report" http://crunchbang.org/misc/user-agent-report-2007-10-17.txt Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 NotYour Business/2.0.0.0 -- Angus Scott-Fleming GeoApps, Tucson, Arizona 1-520-895-3270 ~! ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
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