Hello, Efraim Flashner <efr...@flashner.co.il> writes:
> On Wed, Aug 04, 2021 at 11:22:58PM -0400, Maxim Cournoyer wrote: >> Hi Arun, >> >> Arun Isaac <arunis...@systemreboot.net> writes: >> >> > Hi, >> > >> > Many sites---jitsi among many others---don't work properly when they see >> > an Icecat user agent. Instead, when the user agent is set to a Firefox >> > user agent, these sites work as expected. Users can do this manually by >> > installing user agent switching extensions such as uaswitcher, but it >> > would be much better if our Icecat package, by default, came with a >> > Firefox user agent, and everything worked normally without any user >> > intervention. >> > >> > This bug report arose out of a discussion on help-guix. See >> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2020-11/msg00082.html >> > >> > I would normally volunteer a patch, but building Icecat takes too long >> > (> 24 hours) on my slow computer. It would be nice if someone with a >> > faster build machine handled this. >> >> I thought the default user agent was already that of Firefox for Windows >> (!), purportedly to make it less unique (thus making fingerprinting of >> browsers/users more difficult). >> >> Isn't it the case? I changed mine long ago so I don't remember (to >> please some broken site). >> >> Thank you, >> >> Maxim > > I remember a discussion forever ago about making the User-Agent Guix > specific but we ended up not going that way in order to try to provide > more anonymity. I don't believe I've changed my user agent ever, and > here's what I'm told mine is: > > User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 > Firefox/78.0 > > If you want to experiment with it you can send a patch (and tag me) and > I'll build icecat locally and check it out and let you know how it goes. > Icecat builds fairly quickly for me. Thanks for the information. I got curious and did some archeology in the gnuzilla repository [0] and found the commit that made Windows NT user agent string go away: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- a25c630a21d78be6515648d8d65cf13fb633c3b5 Author: Ruben Rodriguez <ru...@gnu.org> AuthorDate: Thu Sep 13 20:47:06 2018 -0400 Commit: Ruben Rodriguez <ru...@gnu.org> CommitDate: Thu Sep 13 21:02:13 2018 -0400 Parent: f70c9f0 Some customizations to the UI Contained: master Follows: v52.1.0 (21) Precedes: v60.2.0 (3) Preserve Firefox as UserAgent 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) makeicecat | 10 ++++++++-- modified makeicecat @@ -405,6 +405,11 @@ sed 's/mozilla-bin/icecat-bin/' -i build/unix/run-mozilla.sh find -type f | grep run-mozilla | xargs prename s/mozilla/icecat/ +# do not alter useragent/platform/oscpu/etc with fingerprinting countermeasure, it makes things worse +sed '/ShouldResistFingerprinting/,/}/s/^/\/\//' -i ./netwerk/protocol/http/nsHttpHandler.cpp +sed '/If fingerprinting resistance is on/,/}/s/^/\/\//' -i ./dom/base/Navigator.cpp + +# Leave user agent as Firefox sed "/MOZILLA_UAVERSION/ s:IceCat/:Firefox/:" -i netwerk/protocol/http/nsHttpHandler.cpp find . -name region.properties |xargs -i /bin/sed 's_https://www.mibbit.*__' -i {} @@ -421,9 +426,9 @@ cat << EOF >> browser/app/profile/icecat.js // Set useragent to Firefox compatible //pref("general.useragent.compatMode.firefox",true); // Spoof the useragent to a generic one -pref("general.useragent.compatMode.firefox",true); +//pref("general.useragent.compatMode.icecat",true); // Spoof the useragent to a generic one -pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:${FFMAJOR}.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/${FFMAJOR}.0"); +//pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:${FFMAJOR}.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/${FFMAJOR}.0"); pref("general.appname.override", "Netscape"); pref("general.appversion.override", "${FFMAJOR}.0"); pref("general.buildID.override", "Gecko/20100101"); @@ -433,6 +438,7 @@ EOF cat << EOF >> browser/confvars.sh # IceCat settings +MOZ_APP_UA_NAME=IceCat MOZ_APP_VENDOR=GNU MOZ_APP_VERSION=$FFVERSION MOZ_APP_PROFILE=mozilla/icecat --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Closing. Thanks, Maxim [0] git://git.savannah.gnu.org/gnuzilla.git
