Frosted Flake wrote:
What is the recommended/preferred method to make a website see SeaMonkey
as Firefox?
Three ways of going about that:
1) Use the config setting for "Advertise Firefox Compatibility". That
one causes Seamonkey to show a Firefox User Agent string, with Seamonkey
version information tagged onto the end. With that active, my own
setting is:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101
Firefox/52.0 SeaMonkey/2.49.4
I believe that that's the default setting, although there are a few
sites out there that will explicitly object if they see "Seamonkey".
2) Change the setting through an extension. Other responses in this
thread have mentioned PrefBar and UserAgent Switcher. Personally, I like
PrefBar, but either works adequately. What you get with the extensions
is that you can change what User Agent string your browser is showing on
demand. In my own use, it's rare that I have to adjust what I have
above, relative to Firefox and Seamonkey, but one place where I do
spoofing is that although I normally work from Windows, I do some
downloads of Mac software. Some download sites use browser sniffing to
determine what platform you're running, and then when you download, they
give you the download that corresponds with your platform (but nothing
else). Thus, if I want a Mac .DMG file, I will set my UA string so that
it shows that I'm running MacOS, rather than a 64-bit version of Windows 7.
3) You can also do spoofing via settings in your prefs.js file, using
general.user.agent.override , where you specify what UA you want to
show. That one does things globally. You can also do things on a
per-site basis by adding the name of the server to the string. Thus, if
you don't like the Google's location of your cursor at the main Google
web page, you can set general.useragent.override.google.com to show
Firefox (without Seamonkey), and that applies to just Google.
What method you use depends on your preferences. Considerations:
- If you use the extension method, then that changes things globally,
including what's used in your email's User-Agent: header. If you're
spoofing another browser, and you send mail, then your mail will show
that you're using the spoofed browser as your mail client. Most people
won't notice, but I run the Display Mail User Agent extension, and it's
really obvious that spoofing is active if I see a message that purports
to have been sent by Firefox, and not mail client. Thus, if you're
spoofing this way, it's probably best to spoof only as long as you need
it, and then switch back to the default when you no longer need.
- If you're spoofing via general.user-agent.override, that's a
relatively permanent setting, and you might want to apply that for only
certain sites that really require spoofing. I haven't really used this
one, so I don't know of possible effects for email, although you're more
likely to see issues if you use the global setting than if you limit to
specific sites.
- If you do spoofing, you do have to make periodic updates to the string
you're showing, so that what you're showing is reasonably current. If
you are spoofing something old (especially a Firefox version that was in
circulation only a short time, because of updates), it's pretty obvious
that you're spoofing, and that does turn up in server logs. Some web
admins may be aggressive about blocking access to old versions, because
that kind of spoofing is commonly used by bots and other malicious activity.
I will note that one of the more common bots shows itself as
(supposedly) running Firefox 40.1, but that was never a valid version,
and many web sites will reject connections that show that UA.
Smith
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