[tor-bugs] #27495 [Applications/Tor Browser]: Tor Browser 8.0 wrong user-agent

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#27495: Tor Browser 8.0 wrong user-agent
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 Reporter:  temp123                   |          Owner:  tbb-team
     Type:  defect                    |         Status:  closed
 Priority:  Medium                    |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                    |     Resolution:  duplicate
 Keywords:                            |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                            |         Points:
 Reviewer:                            |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by gk):

 Replying to [comment:2 arma]:
 > This ticket makes a good point that the useragent is actually set to
 Windows in my about:config, so it sure looks like it's *trying* to set the
 useragent, it's just not actually setting it correctly (or using it).

 That#s #26146.

 > (I hear from the tor browser devs that they are no longer trying to lie
 about user agent, (a) because you can't actually convincing lie, because
 there are so many other components that would have to change too, and (b)
 because when Android enters the scene, they won't want to get served the
 non-mobile version of pages. But I think there are still some arguments in
 favor of setting the useragent to Windows for the desktop version: passive
 website logs only look at user-agent for one, and when the openbsd people
 get their Tor Browser going they'll sure stand out. Oh and a third reason
 is the flood of people who keep thinking there's a bug to report. :)

 I don't think the third argument is a valid one. Just because an amount of
 (5?, 10?, 1.000?) X people think Y is a bug Y is a bug. The second one is
 neither valid: openbsd and other non macOS *NIXes get a Linux UA. There
 are only fixed UAs for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. So, this leaves
 the first one. Sure, there is a trade-off to be made here. While
 upstreaming (and before) we and Mozilla had reports that this US spoofing
 actually breaks Tor Browser. Not only is it more than confusing to get
 always a random .exe file offered for download even though you are not on
 Windows but things like Google apps were actually broken for macOS users
 (see: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1405810)
 We had https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tbb-
 dev/2017-October/000642.html ff. for the discussion.
 So, I think at least for macOS the breakage is not worth the Windows UA.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27495#comment:4>
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